If you’ve taken the necessary steps to register your copyrighted works, you inevitably will have an opportunity to royalties off of them. To take advantage of the opportunity, you will need to be familiar with copyright license agreements.

Copyright License Agreement

A copyright license agreement sets for the terms under which a third party can use your content. In legal language, you will the “licensor” with the other party being the “licensee.” The purpose of the agreement is to set forth the terms under which you, the licensor, will grant the third party, licensee, the right to use, publish or reuse your copyrighted work in exchange for a royalty. Let’s take a closer look at key components of the licensing agreement.

Discussing a trademark in general is often difficult. Why? It has to do with the fact that you can trademark many things that are unique and entirely different.

When a person thinks of a trademark, most picture a logo of some sort. The swooping Coca Cola brand name is the classic example. Another example is the big red “O” you see in the television commercials for Overstock.com. Such examples of trademarks are fairly standard and most people can understand them without much effort.

In a rather stunning move, Google recently purchased the popular video site YouTube The question many are asking is how Google will deal with the potential copyright violations on the site?

To show you how much the Internet has changed in a relatively short amount of time, it is important to look back at the last big public medium that had copyright issues. In this case, we are talking about Napster. As you know, Napster was a system where music could be traded by people for free. This, of course, drove the record labels and artists crazy. If people were trading the music for free, royalties and revenues were not being produced. To quell the uprising, the music industry went after Napster and even individual users, claiming that the copyright for the musical pieces was being violated. As you also know, the record companies won the fight.

Once you start conducting business, you are going to start running into the topic of intellectual property and trademarks. Understanding the role of a trademark will help you grasp why they are important.

A trademark is a unique form of intellectual property. Most intellectual property is created to protect the person or business creating it. A patent, for example, is designed to protect the inventor from having other parties use it without consent. Copyright works much the same way. A person who writes a hit song should receive compensation from it and copyright is designed to protect the person in this regard.

In many small businesses, intellectual property is an overlooked asset. The goodwill from your company name, computer programs you have written, articles, manuals, or books that you have written, logos, advertising copy, methods you have used or processes to create your products or services, all should be closely examined in conjunction with a qualified intellectual property attorney, to decide how much value they are to your business, and how they should be properly protected.

Intellectual Property (often just called “IP”) is a general term covering patents, trademarks, designs, copyrights, geographical indications and in some countries the concept of “unfair competition”. It is, as the name suggests, the intangible personal property arising from intellectual creation. Since intangible, owner of intellectual property cannot build a fence around it as with real estate or place it in a bank locker as with valuables. To address the situation, governments have created a variety of forms of intellectual property protection.

Types of Intellectual Property Protection

Some of the more common types of intellectual property protection are Patents, Trade Marks, Designs, Copyrights and Geographical Indications.

Society is currently moving through a transition from a community whose wealth is based in tangible goods, such as the means of production, to a community whose true wealth lies in intangible forms of property. We are moving toward a period where knowledge and ideas are more valuable than physical objects. Intellectual property, such as patents, copyright, trademarks and even trade secrets are what drive many of this country’s booming sectors. With widespread internet access, the creation of intellectual property is no longer restricted to large corporations or wealthy people who can afford to develop such property. Any person can develop value through a copyright, a patentable invention or a trademark. As intellectual property continues to grow as a wealth creation tool, individuals will be faced with the challenge of determining the value of the property, and the effect that such property will have on estate taxes.

The case of KK Sony Computer Entertainment and Another v Pacific Game Technology (Holding) Ltd [2006], concerned the infringement of copyright in computer games systems under the name of ‘PlayStation’. The first claimant was a Japanese company and the second claimant was its UK subsidiary. Both claimants were corporate incarnations of the well known Japanese electronics group, Sony.

One of Sony’s products was the latest version of its highly successful family of computer game systems marketed under the name ‘PlayStation’ which the second claimant marketed and sold in over 100 countries, including countries within the European Economic Area (“EEA”). In respect of those computer game systems Sony owned:

In the case of Sportwetten GmbH Gera v the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (“OHIM”) (2005), it was held that the registration of a Community trade mark was not contrary to public policy or public morality.

On 11 January 1999, OHIM published a figurative mark incorporating the word INTERTOPS in respect of Class 42: bookmakers and betting services of all kinds.

Sportwetten GmbH was the proprietor of the trade mark INTERTOPS SPORTWETTEN, registered in Germany in respect of the same types of services.

In the case of Unilin Beheer BV v Berry Floor NV & Ors, Information Management Consultancy Ltd, B&Q plc (2005), the courts ruled that the faulty drafting of a patent application did not amount to lack of reasonable care and skill.

Unilin, the claimant, applied for a patent for a floor covering and the application succeeded. Unilin then became aware of prior art which made it necessary for it to amend the patent application by reducing the scope of the main claim. Unilin also amended the body of the specification so that the text and drawings conformed to the main claim.