Intellectual property law can be very confusing. It seems like not a week goes by when we’re not asked by someone to “help me patent my logo” (you can’t patent a logo) or informed that “we have a trademark in our software” (the name of software can be trademarked, but not the software itself). In order to shed some much needed light on the sometimes murky overlap of patents, copyrights, and trademarks, this is the first a series of posts about the “basics” of intellectual property law. Our first topic of discussion, copyrights.

What Can You Copyright?

Under federal law, a copyright exists in any work of authorship which is fixed in a tangible medium of expression (how’s that for a mouthful of legalese?). A “work of authorship” within the meaning of federal law can be any literary work, musical work, dramatic work, pantomime, choreographic work, pictorial work, graphical work, sculptural work, motion picture, audiovisual work, sound recording, or architectural work. It should be noted, however, that this list is not inclusive of every type of “work” which can be protected under copyright law and it is possible for works not on the list to be copyrighted.

What Do You Get When You Copyright?

The owner of a copyright receives a number of “exclusive rights” in the work. These rights include the right to reproduce the work, prepare derivative works based upon the work, distribute the work, perform the work, display the work, and perform the work.

How Do You Get a Copyright?

Copyright exists as soon the author of a “work of authorship” fixes the work in a tangible medium expression. So as soon as an artist puts brush to canvas, the resulting painting is copyrighted and the artist has all of the “exclusive rights” in the work discussed above. There are, however, a number of reasons why the work should be registered with the U.S. Copyright Office. Reasons which will be discussed in-depth in our next post. Make sure to tune in!

Interested in Copyrighting Your Work?

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