by; Christine Gaudette
How do copyrights, trademarks, and patents work and why are they important?
You can’t protect your ideas itself, but you can protect an expression of an idea. To receive the copyright protection, your idea has to be in a fixed form like a book, photograph, or a recorded song. Once you create an original work you own the copyright, but to protect your work and from others stealing it, you need to officially register it with the federal government.
Trademarks have more to do with business than creativity. The idea behind a trademark is to protect the goods and services between brands. By selling your products and services you do have some rights, but the main reason for trademarks is to prevent confusion between business, brand, and logo names. You can do that by officially registering the business, brand, and logo name. Your original trademark also can stop others from selling goods and services with similar trademarks.
Patents are all about innovation. There are two types of patents, utility patent and a design patent. A utility patent protects the way something works and the design patent protects the way some looks. To get a United States patent you must be the first to apply for it. Just cause you are the first to invent it doesn’t mean that you can get a patent for it. The best way is to apply for it and then invent it. The application that you need to fill out is called a provisional application which is then put on hold for up to one year.
What is your opinion of the 3D printing article and Napster video?
As far as the 3D printing article, I feel that it is a violation of LEGO’s copyright and trademark protection act. Like they are trying to make their packaging and name like LEGO’s one so people buy it thinking that it is a LEGO brand.
In today’s day and age AND technology, everything you want and need is just a click away. As far as Napster is concerned, they should have researched and taken the proper precautions before starting Napster and they should have known that they needed permission from various companies and individuals to be providing music FREE to everyone. Should it have been teenagers, college students, or whomever? It doesn’t matter.
But then again, from the users’ point of view and the prices these days, everyone has to look for whatever they can get for free. So I definitely would have done the same thing if I knew about it I would have been one of those users, no doubt about that. In fact, at the moment I do use a service that provides free internet music, so I have to say I will side with the users.
Should Napster had brought the music industry on-board before he started, I truly believe that they both would have benefitted. Unfortunately, someone else had taken the Napsters idea and turned around and got on board with the music industry so they wouldn’t close them down too. That is why I said, they should have done their research before starting up.
How would you feel if your intellectual property was shared, copied, or edited without your permission?
If any of those things were done to me, I probably would feel violated just like the music industry did. I probably would have also done the same thing too and take Napster to court, not only to save my business and profit, but mostly for my reputation and the musicians.
References
[LegalZoom] 28 Apr 2015 Copyright, Trademark, and Patent
Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsTi3vD_Usw
[The New York Times] 8 Dec 2014 Napster Documentary: Culture of Free | Retro Report | The New York Times
Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKrdsGdLVQ8
[3D Printing Industry] 30 Sept 2019 3D Printing Community Hit by LEGO Takedown Notice-3D Printing
Retrieved from https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/3d-printing-community-hit-by-lego-takedown-notices-162451/
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