Celaunds.com

Tech which makes Sense

The other day, I was having a conversation about copyright law, you see, I am the author of an article online and produced several e-books, and before my period as a writer, I was quite concerned about protecting the operations manual from our company. to fall into the hands of the competition. I have had a bit of success in all of the above things and therefore I have had quite a few experiences both positive and negative when it comes to copyright law.

Now during our conversation, we broached the subject of writing quotes, slogans, poems, and even school wrestling songs that are often used in soccer, basketball, and other athletic competitions. Obviously, if you have a good fight song, let’s say you’re a college or university, someone might kidnap it and use it at their high school in some small town somewhere in the United States. Now as a big university, you probably don’t care if a high school uses it in their soccer game.

However, it is your brand and your school’s fight song, and you need to protect it. A very short quote or school motto could be a trademark. However, it is difficult to trademark something that you have not used in interstate commerce. However, if you are a college student traveling to other states for athletic competitions, that would be sufficient, therefore, you can register it as a trademark. If you do, you legally have more teeth if someone uses them without your permission.

Of course, if your school motto has multiple sentences and your fight song has multiple verses, then obviously a trademark is completely the wrong place, and you won’t be able to assure it from the USPTO. So can a copyright suffice? In other words, if you put a little “c” at the bottom that warns everyone that you are claiming copyright and that they can’t use it without your permission, and of course you would grant them permission sometime, therefore it’s safe , truth?

Hardly anyone could still try to take it, you can even use it on your blog or modify the words to make your school look bad. In that case, they are violating your copyright in many respects, but you have yet to defend that. They could claim that they added significant new value by changing the words and trashing the school fight song, so that’s okay? Well, legally they could have a good defense in that case under the “fair use” principle; however, that doesn’t make you or your school very happy.

And if you think that won’t or can’t happen, think again, it happens all the time. The problem with trademarks, patents, copyrights, and other things of this nature is that even if you claim copyright, have a trademark, or have filed a patent for something, that’s where the fun begins, from henceforth he still has to defend it. That costs money, it takes time, and the internet is rampant with the hijacking of copyrighted material. In fact, I hope you will please consider all of this and think about it. In the meantime, good luck.

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