Business 101: Trademarks vs Copyrights

In an effort to protect our name and our concept - and keep the owner of the .com address that I over-negotiated with - from doing anything silly, we've purchased the .net address and are considering a Trademark or Copyright.

Why? I don't know - it was a suggestion from someone.

Which one would we need? Who knows, but I have learned this, both are forms of intellectual property and:

• Copyright: cover expression of ideas. Are good for things considered "original works of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software and architecture". Companies who have copyrighted include: Yahoo, Community Connect (parent of BlackPlanet and AsianAvenue - all copyrighted), Amazon, PayPal, eBay
  
  
• Trademark: cover brand names and logos and includes "a word, name, symbol, device or any combination, used or intended to identify and distinguish the goods and services from one proprietor from that of another". Companies who have trademarked include Google, Digg, Friendster, Skype,
  
  
• Companies that did neither: Netflix, Nike? Hmm...
  

Copyright: 5 points
Trademark: 4 points

Lessons learned:

1. We still don't know the difference between the two... or which one is applicable to our situation (and apparently neither do some companies when you really get down to it).
   
2. A trademark might offer some protection but would probably be a bigger waste of time and energy at this point... and that just refers to submitting and obtaining the trademark. We haven't even begun to discuss enforcing the trademark.
   
3. A lot of companies have chosen neither to copyright nor trademark their name/logo.
   

The Verdict: More research is necessary (or a lawyer - but I dont feel like paying one of those).

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Now Playing: Talib Kweli - Beautiful Struggle (title track)