trademark, copyright, protections, and why you shouldn't really be worrying about it
ok, its not that you shouldn’t protect your work, you should … in-fact you already have and might just not know it. copyright exists the second you create something, the work you’ve created is yours and belongs to you. the issue becomes protecting and enforcing that right to your work.
i’m not a lawyer and the chances are that you aren’t either. however, i get a ton of questions and concerns about people stealing other peoples ideas. someone contacts us almost weekly about a design they have that they don’t want to reveal until they have a copyright or trademark in place. my response to that usually has two points:
they found us by word of mouth and good word of mouth doesn’t exist if you are a thief.
we are working artists and value originality. plus, we have been doing this long enough to know the value of longterm relationships. if you have one good idea, the chances are you have many others. we want to be with you for all of them. our benefit comes from our customers success. so, i get the apprehension but i assure you, we won’t steal your ideawe have a hundred of our own ideas we haven’t even gotten to yet.
like i said, i get the apprehension. people have been stealing my ideas since i started having ideas. its human to try to be like the people that inspire us, theres truly no harm in that. it becomes an issue when someone takes a direct work and claims it as their own. thats just a crap move and you have some options if that happens. i’m not going to go into them (see above re: not a lawyer) BUT i did just listen to a great podcast by Seth Godin on this very topic and thought enough of it to share here.
so go listen, take notes - it will be worth every second.
SETH GODIN : Entrepreneur’s guide to trademarks
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