intellectual-property, patent, copyright, trademarkI just finished creating my first app which is a social network which will be used by people mainly in US and Canada when it first comes out. We are expecting a decent amount of users using it after just the first month. We have not registered the company name yet.
My question is, before releasing the app, should I get a patent, trademark the name or copyright the name? Or is it best if I do all three?
I was going to trademark the name but I’m not sure if I have to get a patent for it as well.
You can’t patent or copyright a name.
There are four relevant types of IP.
Patent
When we think of patents, we generally think of utility ones, so I’ll focus on that. A utility patent is on a process or invention, in essence. A patent gives you the right to say, for twenty years, “hey! I came up with that invention, so you aren’t allowed to perform it without paying me.” The gist behind a patent is that the government wants you to share your inventions, and in return, they’ll help you stop anyone from stealing your ideas out from under you.
An example of a patent might be a chair. You could get a patent on a seat with four legs. Similarly, you could get a patent on using a certain algorithm to accomplish a certain task
Trademark
A trademark is just what it sounds like. It’s protection for a mark that you use in trade. That’s where your name would come in. You can trademark a name or a logo, and that holds other people from using it as well. Trademarks are meant to protect consumers. In other words, if I started sowing basketball attire and selling it with the NIKE logo, that would probably be pretty confusing to consumers, and it would be detrimental to NIKE if people bought my product and found it to be low-quality.
Copyright
A copyright is on artwork. Artwork is a broad term, as it can include drawings, music, architectural designs, really prettily written C++ code, or just about any other purely-aesthetic thing. The idea of a copyright is to just stop other people from copying you. If you draw a picture you really like, you probably don’t want someone else photocopying it and selling that copy, and having a registered copyright would protect you from that. You do get implicit copyrights on any artwork, but you’ll need to register them before going to court.
Trade Secrets
I know you didn’t mention this, but it seems like good measure to include. A trade secret is never registered with anyone and is exactly what it sounds. You have some intellectual property–say, for random example, the Coca-Cola recipe, a very famous trade secret–and you don’t want anyone stealing it. Rather than depending on the government to give you a license to it, you simply don’t tell anyone. The only form of measurable protection granted by a trade secret is that if anyone breaks confidence and tells, you can sue them. Of course, that’s rarely of particular use once your competitors know your secrets.
Another classic example of a trade secret is a client list.
All content is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.