A trademark, in short, is a sign that distinguishes goods or services and has distinctive features. It is the most common type of intellectual property rights. Patents refer to inventions and creations protected by law, including three types: invention patents, utility model patents and design patents. Copyright, also known as authorship, refers to the rights that authors of literary, artistic, and scientific works have over their works.

Trademarks, patents and copyrights are of different natures

Both trademarks, patents and copyrights require manual review when registering applications, but based on the different characteristics of the three, the review The focus is also different:

Trademark review focuses on distinctiveness, which to put it simply means that it can be distinguished and different from others.

The focus of patent review is novelty. To put it simply, this technology is unprecedented. The review method is also very simple, generally judging by reviewing existing literature. If no existing literature can be found, it means that the patent is novel.

Copyright is relatively special because the copyright is obtained from the author's completion date and does not require a certificate to prove his rights. Many people will definitely ask after seeing this, in this case, why do we need to register the copyright? In fact, the author enjoys the copyright regardless of whether the copyright is registered, but it is difficult to prove who is the original author. For example, if you write an article and someone else uses it one day, how can you prove that the article was written by you? If you register the copyright after writing the article, and someone else steals your article, you can Take out the copyright certificate to protect your rights. Therefore, copyright registration reduces the burden of proof on the original author (if it is not registered, it will be difficult for the original author to produce convincing evidence, or even if it can be produced, the cost will be very high, and it is better to spend hundreds of dollars. It is cost-effective to register a copyright).

The review of copyright registration is also relatively easy. Only formal review is done, and no substantive review is done. Therefore, the application time is also very fast, and the application can usually be completed in about one month. Copyright review mainly focuses on originality. To put it simply, it means that you have not plagiarized. In fact, this is difficult to determine. In practice, many plagiarized works have successfully applied for copyright registration.

Summary and Suggestions

Let’s summarize the above discussion: Copyright only serves the purpose of registration, and its greatest significance is to reduce the author’s burden of proof. If others could produce stronger evidence in court, perhaps the plot would be reversed. Even if there is no copyright registration, the original author still has legal rights. In a nutshell, the copyright registration certificate only has presumptive effect and has no proving effect; trademarks and patents are different. Once the registration is successful, the certificate can defeat opponents and is a powerful weapon to safeguard rights and interests.

Since trademarks and patent certificates have strong certifying effect, entrepreneurs must apply for trademarks and patents in advance before the products are released to the public to prevent others from preemptively registering them. Once squatting occurs, although you can appeal, the procedure is complicated and costly. Many disputes have not yet been resolved. Entrepreneurs should take this as a lesson. In addition, it is best to register copyright for important works. If you do not want to register copyright, you can also keep a copy of the evidence for yourself in the simplest way, that is, apply for an email address of a well-known company and send a copy of the work to that The email address, time and content on the email will be important evidence when defending your rights. Although the legal effect of email is lower than that of copyright registration, and when actually defending rights, the cost of proof is likely to be higher than the copyright registration fee, this method can be regarded as leaving a regret for yourself.