Can Your Invention Be Protected By Copyright?

Copyright is an underutilized form of protection by inventors. It has some great things going for it:

  • It is free (but registering for $65 can be worthwhile)
  • It lasts for a lifetime + 70 years
  • There's no examination, no renewals or maintenance fees

In the following vlog I discuss how inventors might use it:

Copyright exists automatically when you create a work of art, take a photograph, write music, write a book or a blog post, make a video or a movie. Copyright protects buildings, sculpture and choreography. If something incorporates "artistic expression" that artistic expression can be protected by copyright.

With regard to a manufactured product, what is the difference between a copyright and a design patent? Like all things regarding intellectual property there's some grayness and you can have overlapping protection,

Design Patents:

  1. Protect the ornamental design of functional items (how something looks)
  2. Must be novel and non-obvious to get protection
  3. Provide 15 years of protection from the grant date
  4. Must be registered with the USPTO through a formal application process
  5. Protects against others making, using, or selling the design even if they created it independently

Copyrights:

  1. Protect original creative works (art, music, literature, photographs, etc.)
  2. Protection is automatic as soon as the work is created
  3. Lasts for the creator's lifetime plus 70 years
  4. Registration with the Copyright Office is optional but required for lawsuits
  5. Only protects against copying - independent creation is allowed

Example:

  • The unique shape of an iPhone could be protected by a design patent
  • The wallpaper image on the iPhone would be protected by copyright.


Note 1: to preserve the option of statutory damages, make sure to file within three months of publication or before any infringement occurs.

Note 2: If you expect your product to be a big success, you should anticipate litigation. And if you anticipate litigation, it's critical to have everything done right, all of the t's crossed and i's dotted. So, in that light, having a lawyer handle filings for copyright makes sense.

Note 3: I am not a lawyer and the opinions I offer here are from my perspective as a professional who develops and commercializes new products.

- Mike

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