Creativity Requirement of Copyright

One of the basic requirements for copyright protection is creativity. A work must include something that is above and beyond the original. Verbatim use is not considered original. Reference to the original work that is used to discuss a new concept would, however, be considered original. The creativity need only be extremely slight for the work to be eligible for protection.

Patent Law

A patent is a property right that the federal government gives to an inventor with respect to an invention. That property right is the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing the patented invention without the inventor's permission for the limited period specified by the patent statute. A person or other entity that makes, uses, sells, offers for sale, or imports the invention covered by the patent is said to liable for direct infringement of the patent. Patent infringement is classified by the law as a "tort," which is a wrong--other than a breach of contract--for which the law provides a remedy. Therefore, the rules of tort law will govern how a lawsuit alleging patent infringement is to be commenced and prosecuted.

Color as Trademark Subject Matter

Under the Lanham Act "any word, name, symbol or device" may be eligible for trademark registration. Courts have differed as to whether or not the law recognizes the use of color alone as a trademark because the Lanham Act does not specifically mention color. For many years the general rule had been that color would not be given trademark significance because of the limited number of colors available, unless the color was employed as an element of a distinctive design.

Reproduction Rights

The reproduction right is one of the exclusive rights granted to the owner of a copyright by the Copyright Act. Under this right, no one other than the copyright owner may make any reproductions or copies of the work. Under the Copyright Act the copyright owner has the exclusive right to reproduce the copyrighted work or to authorize its reproduction. Examples of unauthorized acts which are prohibited under this right include photocopying a book, copying a computer software program, using a cartoon character on a T-shirt, and incorporating a portion of another's song into a new song. The Copyright Act covers reproduction in any form.

Typeface as Trademark Subject Matter

There are three types of protection that can be afforded to typefaces and fonts in addition to basic license agreements: trademark, design patent, and copyright. These are intended to keep non licensees from copying the fonts in some way and passing them off as original material. The trademark system is the weakest form of protection, allowing only the font name itself to be protected. This means that no one is allowed to use a currently existing typeface name for a new font, even if the fonts are completely unrelated. The design patent system is the strongest, but it is the most uncommon type of protection.