When it’s time to start selling your products, you’re going to need to ensure that nothing is copyrighted or trademarked. This includes your logo, slogan and business name. It might not sound like a big deal if you are a small business, but you can lose everything in an instant by violating copyright and trademark laws.
What is a copyright?
Copyright is someone else’s intellectual property and it protects their original work. Works includes things like paintings, illustrations, compositions, poems, blog posts, movies and almost any form of expression you can imagine. A work is considered original when it is created by someone else or yourself with a certain amount of creativity and it isn’t copied.
Laws vary by country, but copyright has been a law in the United State’s since 1790 according to copyright.gov. Copyright lasts for a long time. It is granted to be effective for the life of the author plus 70 years.
To learn more about copyright, to search copyright records, to register your own works and any other information about it, visit copyright.gov. If you have specific questions, it may be best to contact a copyright lawyer.
What is a trademark?
A trademark protests a work, symbol, design or phrase for goods and services. A trademark can help protect your products in the marketplace so other businesses can’t copy what you make exactly. A trademark will legally protect your brand.
It’s important to note that a trademark only legally grants you ownership to a work or phrase that is tied to a specific service or product. You become a trademark owner once you start using it, but you have limited rights until you apply to register a trademark. Once you register a trademark with a deferral registration, it protects your rights nationwide to use it.
Where it gets tricky is that a lot of crafters are applying for trademarks these days of almost any phrase you can think of so that they can try to keep competition away. To see if something is trademarked, visit the uspto.gov website to research it. If a common phrase is trademarked or you feel like someone trademarked something of yours and you can show you’ve been using it longer, then you can actually file a Letter of Protest or a LOP on the United State’s Patent and Trademark Office’s website at uspto.gov.
I would suggest joining Facebook groups online to help you with trademark questions and answers, as well as talking to a trademark attorney. There are many groups out there who fight against people who trademark common words and phrases that are trademarked because some people choose to be trademark bullies. It’s really important that you do the research on any words or phrases on products you use, as your products or services can be removed from third party selling platforms like Etsy if they do violate trademark laws.
Protect Yourself
Do the research on anything you use in your business to ensure that you are not violating copyright and trademark laws. Then take the appropriate actions to trademark and copyright anything that is unique to your business when you can afford to do so. This will help to protect your business immensely.
If you are ever in doubt or confused about anything, it’s best to either contact an attorney or get in touch with an official government representative on the websites I have listed above. It can be confusing, but understanding these laws will put you one step ahead of any legal issues that could come up in the future.
