Trademark Violation Fundamentals - A Copyright Attorney's Perspective

Few legal principles inspire more confusion than copyright law. Our copyright lawyers often spend as much time educating our clients, because we are digging into their specific legal issues. Copyright law, as well as other intellectual property rights, is inevitably fact specific. Get legal advice about your specific situation from a qualified copyright attorney is critical. Educate yourself about U.S. copyright law so that you understand what your lawyer is telling you is just as important.

Copyright infringement is the unauthorized use of material that is covered by U.S. copyright law, in a manner that violates one of the copyright owner's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or copyrighted work to perform, or make derivative works.

Copyright holders' exclusive rights include the right to: reproduce the copyrighted work, to prepare derivative works based on the work, distribute the work to the public, perform the copyrighted work publicly, and publicly display the copyrighted work.

In order to prove that the exclusive rights under U.S. law on copyright infringement, the copyright owner, the copyright owner must demonstrate that he / she is the original work of the "owner" and prima facie infringement.

Copyright owned by showing the "authorship" of the original work fixed on a tangible medium - articles, books, pictures, movies, music, etc., the person who created the original work of the copyright owner. Copyright holder can "assign" the copyright of a third person, who shall exercise all the author's exclusive rights, including the reproduction, performance or derivative works. The question of who actually owns the copyright is one of the most overlooked and simplified matters.

Some employers believe that they own the copyright to their employees. Employees and independent contractors sometimes incorrectly assume that they have a job, developed by third parties. Equity issues should be identified and clearly premature. Just saying, property or the original work and copyright registration can leave your copyright registration open to attack later, when rights are asserted.

U.S. copyright laws help define copyright law. Section 17 U.S.C. § 102 (a) provides: "Copyright protection remains under this title, original works, the fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later, from which they can be perceived, reproduced or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the machine or device support.

"idea is not copyright, although it may be patentable. Ideas for the expression of long-term tangible form (ie written pages of a book, CD, web page, on the canvas, as a printed photo) allows copyright protection. While these principles are sound complicated, an experienced copyright lawyer can help you understand whether you can copyright protect their original work and to get the protection that copyright provides.

Infringement occurs when a third party copies of copyright protected work. Unauthorized copying performed with direct evidence (sometimes copying is obvious or admitted) or Inference (not surprisingly, offenders often deny copying). Circumstantial evidence of copying is often important to show damage.

In his original work the U.S. Copyright Office registration is not mandatory that you have a common law (common law) rights. However, registration is often very important and execution must take place prior to infringement action in federal court. Our copyright lawyers often get calls from who failed to register their works before learning the breach of the original authors. This can be a fatal error performance is difficult or impossible.