FAQ

• What is a Trademark, Copyright, Servicemark, Patent?
• Are there alternatives to copyright?
• What is Copyleft?
• How do I make the trademark symbols on my computer?
• Why do you have advertising on your site?
• How was the site “drag and drop poetry” made?
• Do trademark owners have priority over domain names?
• What is “fair use”?
• Are Trademarks International?

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What is a Trademark, Copyright, Servicemark, Patent...?

“Copyrights and trademarks, which are sometimes confused, provide different forms of protection. Copyright law protects the way authors and artists express facts and ideas (but not the underlying facts and ideas). Unlike copyright law, trademark law protects names, titles, short phrases and other symbols that distinguish the source of one product (or service) from another. Trademarks -- which are a form of commercial shorthand -- are important in a marketing sense because they establish goodwill between a purchaser and seller. A service mark relates to services in the same way a trademark relates to products.

Patents are used to protect inventions. A patent is applied for and includes a search for conflicting patents or inventions and consists of claims that are typically drafted by an intellectual property or patent attorney.

Just about anything that identifies and distinguishes products and services in the marketplace can function as a trademark. A trademark can be a word, symbol, distinctive phrase, design, product shape, combination of letters or numbers, or even a sound or a smell that identifies and distinguishes particular goods from those of others.

Unlike copyrights that exist from the moment of creation, trademarks generally develop over a period of time -- gathering strength through public recognition. While copyrights grow old, die and fall into the public domain, trademark rights can continue indefinitely if there is continuous use, and the mark (shorthand for trademark) is not permitted to lose its trademark significant by becoming a generic term. Even the tests for copyright and trademark infringement differ.? ”

“Copyright laws are standardized through international conventions such as the Berne Convention in some countries and are required by international organizations such as European Union or World Trade Organization from their member states.

The ™ symbol may be used when trademark rights are claimed in relation to a mark, but the mark has not been registered with the government trademarks office of a particular country or jurisdiction, while the ® is used to indicate that the mark has been so registered. It is not mandatory to use either symbol, although the force of convention is such that the symbols are widely used around the world. However, in various jurisdictions it is unlawful to use the ® symbol in association with a mark when that mark is not registered.

The ™ symbol is sometimes used in hacker slang to signify the importance of a concept, such as Real OS(TM) or Real Programmer(TM). It may also carry the connotation "so-called", as in the political neologism "Religion of Peace™"

Most jurisdictions totally exclude certain types of terms and symbols from registration as trademarks, including the emblems, insignia and flags of nations, certain organizations and the modern Olympic Games, marks which are deceptive as to the origin of their associated products or services (eg. as to their geographic origin), and marks comprising signs which are contrary to accepted principles of morality (eg. marks which are obscene). One high-profile example of the latter comprised a court challenge in England to the FCUK trademark used by clothing company French Connection UK.”

Are there alternatives to copyright?

Yes, in addition to the GNU General Public License the Creative Commons has released several licenses. You can mix and match the licenses.

Attribution:

You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work ? and derivative works based upon it ? but only if they give credit the way you request.

Noncommercial:

You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work ? and derivative works based upon it ? but for noncommercial purposes only.

No Derivative Works:

You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.

Share Alike:

You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.

What is Copyleft?

“Copyleft is a play on the word copyright and is the practice of using copyright law to remove restrictions on distributing copies and modified versions of a work for others and requiring that the same freedoms be preserved in modified versions.

Copyleft is commonly implemented by a license and is applied to works such as computer software, documents, music, and art. Whereas copyright law, by default, automatically restricts the right to make and redistribute copies of an author's work, a copyleft license uses copyright law to ensure that every person who receives a copy of a work has the same rights to study, use, modify, and also redistribute both the work, and derived versions of the work. Such licenses typically do so by requiring that the same license terms apply to all redistributed versions of the work. The most widely used and originating copyleft license is the GNU General Public License (GPL).

In a non-legal sense, copyleft is the opposite of copyright, by passing on the freedoms of copyright to all recipients of the work. In a legal sense, copyleft uses the right of the author to impose copyright restrictions with a copyright license on those who want to use the work in ways that require copyright. Under a copyleft form of copyright license, the restrictions imposed are that the work can be copied, modified or used in any subsequent work if, and only if, the author of that subsequent work agrees to grant the same copyleft rights to the public to freely copy, use and modify the subsequent work. For this reason copyleft licenses are also known as reciprocal licenses.”

How do I make the trademark symbols on my computer?

You can copy and paste the symbols from here: ® © ™ or

Why do you have advertising on your site?

The site was developed by Triplesmart in our spare time. We put ads on the site so we can spend more time making interesting projects and less time working for hire. We make money if people click on the ads.

How was the site “drag and drop poetry” made?

The drag and drop poetry was programmed by Lucas Caro using Script.aculo.us libraries. It is written in Java Script. The rest of the site was a piece of cake!

Do trademark owners have priority over domain names?

“The advent of the domain name system has led to attempts by trademark holders to enforce their rights over domain names that are similar or identical to their existing trademarks, particularly by seeking control over the domain names at issue. As with dilution protection, enforcing trademark rights over domain name owners involves protecting a trademark outside the obvious context of its consumer market, because domain names are global and not limited by goods or service.

This conflict was more easily resolved when the domain name user actually used his website to compete with the trademark owner. Cybersquatting, however, involves no such competition, but instead an unlicensed user registering the trademark as a domain name in order to pressure a payoff (or other benefit) from the lawful mark owner. Typosquatters ?those registering common misspellings of trademarks as domain names? have also been targeted successfully in trademark infringement suits.

This international legal change has also led to the creation of ICANN Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) and other dispute policies for specific countries (such as Nominet UK?s

DRS) which attempt to streamline the process of resolving who should own a domain name (without dealing with other infringement issues such as damages). This is particularly desirable to trademark owners when the domain name registrant may be in another country or even anonymous.?

What is “fair use”?

”Fair use is a copyright principle based on the belief that the public is entitled to freely use portions of copyrighted materials forpurposes of commentary and criticism. For example, if you wish to criticize a novelist, you should have the freedom to quote a portion of the novelist's work without asking permission. Absent this freedom, copyright owners could stifle any negative comments about their work.“

Are Trademarks International?

The inherent limitations of the territorial application of trademark laws have been mitigated by various intellectual property treaty is the WTO (formerly GATT ) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (' TRIPs '). Amongst other things, TRIPs generally requires that the trademark laws of member jurisdictions are compatible with each other, a quality which is known as ‘harmonisation’. For example, Article 15(1) of TRIPs provides a definition for ‘sign’ which is used as or forms part of the definition of a ‘trademark’ contained in the trademark legislation of many jurisdictions around the world.

Foremost amongst the systems which facilitate registration of trademarks in multiple jurisdictions is the ‘Madrid system’, which provides a centrally administered system of obtaining a bundle of single jurisdiction trademark registrations based on an ‘international registration’.

In basic terms, the primary advantage of the Madrid system is that it allows a trademark owner to obtain trademark protection in any or all memberstates by filing one application in one jurisdiction with one set of fees, and make any changes (eg. changes of name or address) and renew registration across all applicable jurisdictions through a single administrative process.

The Community Trade Mark system is the supranational trademark system which applies in the European Union, whereby registration trademark with the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (Trade Marks and Designs) (i.e. OHM, the trademarks office of the European Union), leads to a registration which is effective throughout the EU as a whole. The CTM system is therefore said to be unitary in character, in that a CTM registration applies indivisibly across all European Union member states . However, the CTM system did not replace the national trademark registration systems; the CTM system and the national systems continue tooperate in parallel to each other (see also European Union trade mark law).