Copyright/trademark
 

Any copy wright trade mark experts?

Does an image used in business need to be copy righted and trade marked? As an example, Pelicans, Pelican, I assume it is copy righted? As the company Logo is it also trademarked?

What protections are afforded by each that one or the other does not afford?

Any ideas on costs to copy right or trademark?

The actual logo would be automatically copyrighted either by the original artist or the person who paid the original artist to create it (creator vs. work for hire), though penalties/enforcement can differ if the copyright is actually registered.

Trademark would be the "doing business in automotive stuff with the name Pelican". Which is why you can have McDonalds Roofing, Inc but face a likely smack-down for McDonalds Hamburgers, or that guy Mike Rowe and his software at the mikerowesoft.com domain that was removed/given to MS due to trademark. Think you must register a trade mark and actively pursue enforcement of violations. Note that in a town not too far from me there is a Pelican Hotel, a Pelican restaurant, Pelican Realty, all sorts of Pelican named things (Cedar Key, Fl - a drinking town with a fishing problem and artist infestation)

Note - I spent 10 minutes in the Levin School of Law at UF and that was looking for a bathroom and vending machine. But, with my bend towards Free and Open Software you tend to learn the definition of some of these things and how they work....

Cedar Key seems to have changed since I flew in there are and stayed for a week about 20 years ago

Nah, one of the bars/restaurants closed down (over-served a friend's brother to the point he was falling off the barstool and they let him attempt to drive home) and they are hell on DD now but otherwise same lazy place.

If you make plans to be in the area again, hit me up - its a 50 minute drive for me but I've got a goal to spend more weekends fishing this year....

Enforcing them might be the "real" problem. What's at $take and are you willing to do that?

You could put the Coke swoosh on a set of running shoes and Coke would probably try to litigate you to death however there is no legal grounds for them to do so. Their branding is associated with soft drinks, not footwear.

If you were trying to use the coke branded footwear to sell soft drinks, that is where things get sticky.

The bottom line, if you suspect it is copyrighted, it is. Now if you take a Porsche logo, and make yourself a 6 foot tall sign for your garage, Porsche will not care. If you put that same 6 foot logo for sale on EBAY, you will have the Porsche attorneys all over you.

Any logo for a company is copyrighted.

At the aerial photo company I formally worked at we sold high quality aerial photos, a 16x20 of your property from 1952 was $90 bucks. We had our company name in the corner as part of the image, and it was stamped on the back with copyright information.

The owner of the company was ruthless with copyright enforcement. He happened to go into the lobby of a multi office building and saw a poor quality copy of one of our prints. Right on the front was the name of our business. He knew who we sold the original photo to and he had his attorney send a letter, and then filed suit when there was no reply. He won a $20,000 judgement and the judge explained he was going easy on the defendant because he made multiple copies of other images and he could be fined 20K per image.

My old boss did that multiple times over the years.

If someone called and asked for permission to copy a photo we said no, we sell those for a living, buy from us, and we will make you a good deal if it was a recent order. We did not want low quality copies of our images out on walls or someone looking at it and thinking what a crappy quality print.

Hi Guys,

Thank you all for your input. So to be a little more specific, My wife has a small business and I designed a Logo/Mascot for her that is used not only as part of her product but as her logo. It is a cartoonish logo along the lines of the Pelican or the Gecko for Geico, Homer from Home depot etc.

My concern is it is becoming popular, I keep telling her to Copy right it so no one can steal it and claim it as theirs. She states that it also needs to be registered as her trademark. I think the trademark can be pushed off?

I am more worried about the image being stolen.

As said, it is already protected by copyright when you created it. Unless of course it could be a derivative work...

Anyway, registering the image's copyright will give stronger penalties and make it easier to enforce if you find someone violating it. But you'd still need to find someone violating it - there are no magical copyright police.

Ok, so I didn't know it was already copy righted just by it's creation. So copy "registering" it gives you protection if someone says I created it you didn't?

Those would all be trademarks.

It costs nothing to register a copy right. And that's what it's worth. A copy right is worthless unless you are protecting something you are willing to spend a LOT of money to defend. I've had hundreds of my photographs plastered on the internet with no attribution and no regard for the fact that I own them. Entire magazine articles that I went to great effort and expense to create have been reprinted on the 'net with no mention of where they came from. It's not worth my time or my money to pursue the thieves. In some instances the articles contain reproduced images from museums and archives that cost me hundreds of dollars to buy one-time rights to. I don't know if the institutions I paid for their use ever pursued the thieves, but I doubt it. Sometime I worry that they will come after me.

You don’t register a copyright. It is automatic.

Any intellectual property (copyright, patents, industrial designs, trademarks) costs money to defend. There is no IP police.

If your wife feels her art is being stolen, she should write a letter to whoever is using it without her permission as a first step.

Not exactly. Yes, as soon as you create something unique you own it, but if you ever need to defend your ownership you need to establish that YOU are the creator and you need to establish WHEN you created it. Registering it plants your flag in the sand on both counts.

That is what I am attempting to do plant the flag in the event it needs to be defended. The image has been used several times with out permission. The incidents ended ok but just looking into the future and we need to establish ownership.

Some years ago I owned a barbershop in the name was the word haircuttery, I received a letter from The Haircuttery that they owned the rights to the words as it was copyrighted.

Thanks all for the input.

My experience has been different here. You can indeed register a copyright even though it may not be required. The Copyright Office (within the Library of Congress) charges $45 for the electronic registration of a copyright. They took my money, cashed my checks, and sent me the copyright registrations! In fact, someone called me from that office during one of my applications to get some clarifying info.

I cannot speak to what protections are actually afforded by having an official copyright but it seemed, at least to me, having something official was better than nothing. I still mark my works with 'copyright © 20XX my-name_here'. This document details the registration process of cost for copyrighting: https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ04.pdf

That is my point and $45 is perfectly fine. Thank you for the attachment.

Huh. Used to be free. There were companies that would register for you, and they charged a fee, but I never used them.

You should have told them to 'pound sand' you cant copyright a word, not even a made up one.

If this was a trademark, and it sounds like it could have been, that's different. Even then, jurisdiction comes into play.

I'm not a trademark agent, patent agent, or patent lawyer. Everything I have posted here is based on my experience over the years as an inventor and entrepreneur. I have 33 issued patents and probably another 30 applications that are either active or have been abandoned. I have successfully defended one of my patents that has generated ~ $600M in revenue (for my former company). I write my own patent applications, my patent lawyer reviews and files them (often as written) and then I let her deal with the office actions and claim amendments. I have very close friends who are either patent engineers, patent agents, patent lawyers, or trademark agents. If you want professional advice, you need to speak with a IP lawyer for advise.

Some things simply can't be copyrighted. Like a song title. Look up songs titled "Sail Away" and you will find several, and all are quite different.

Movie titles or book titles are the same way. Anyone can write a book now called "50 shades of Grey" and as long it uses no charterer like in the other book, and is a book with no plot points like the, it is fine. Someone can make a movie called Star Wars, and as long as no Jedi knights and plot points are the same, it is OK.

Some things are protected by international trademark. The Olympic rings are trademarked and you can't use them in anything except official Olympic sanctioned events.

UncleBilly hat was along time ago and you are probably correct, I didn't know any better then not that it would have mattered, I simply removed the word.

Just an FYI- I gave my wife the info posted on here she went to the site provided by fireant911 and registered her piece of artwork. It was $65.00. I will follow up when the paperwork arrives.

Thank you all again for posting and your help.