A Look at Company Protection

Trademarks, Copyrights, and Patents

Trademarks

• Identifies and distinguishes a specific product from others in the marketplace

Trademark vs. Trade Name

• Trade Name: Identifies a company or business Kraft®

• Trademark: identifies the goods of a company ALTOIDS ®

• Service Mark: Identifies the services of a company – Weight Watchers SM

Difference Between TM and ®• TM – A Business needs to do this to claim the

rights of a product/service

•® This symbol is the use only after federal registration. Needs to be registered every 10 years

Copyright

• Protects “original work of authorship”

• Literacy• Music• Dramatic• Artistic Work

©

TrademarkWord

Name

Symbol

Slogan

• “Melts in your mouth, not in your hand”

Can You Name Who Made That Trademark?

• "Let's Get Ready to Rumble!"

Let’s Get Ready to Rumble

• Trademarked by Michael Buffer

• As of 2009, Buffer had earned over $400 million from licensing on the trademark

Patent

• Protects Inventions – original ideas or new processes

• It can protect something that is in the design stage and not yet developed

Types of Patents

• Utility Patent– Protects the functional aspects of an invention.– Can provide broad patent protection making it

difficult for a competing product to avoid patent infringement.

– Capable of protecting many different variations of a product with a single utility patent.

– 2-3 Years to receive

Design Patent

• Design patents do not protect the functional features of an invention (most inventions have functional features).

• easy to design around by simply changing the overall appearance of the competing product.

• Difficult to protect different variations of product.

•