Entrepreneurs rightly value good ideas for business names, brand names, logos, slogans and, in creative industries, titles. A creative business name or striking logo can do wonders for establishing your brand and building customer loyalty. A clever article or movie title can be a great help in marketing your work for distribution. I frequently get asked if these types of creative ideas can be protected by copyright.
Business Names, Slogans, Brand Names, and Other Short Phrases
Business names, slogans, brand names, and other short phrases cannot be copyrighted. They are explicitly excluded from copyright protection. Any kind of name, title, catch phrase or short advertising expression will fall under this exclusion. Listings of ingredients, including recipes, formulas, and labels, are also not protected by copyright (although text descriptions, directions, or explanations may be copyrightable).
Trademark Protection for Names and Slogans
Ideas for business names, brand names, and slogans can be protected by trademark law if you intend to use them in commerce. Trademark law protects brand names, logos, slogans, and anything else that is used in commerce to distinguish your products or services from those of others. Trademark law grants exclusive rights to such marks to the first user, under certain circumstances.
For example, if you place your logo or brand name on your products so that customers can easily identify them and distinguish them from the products of competitors, that logo or brand name is protected as a trademark. Similarly, slogans, brand names, and other marks used to advertise your services are afforded trademark protection.
Although some protection for trademarks arises automatically when you begin using them in commerce, it is necessary to register your trademark at the federal level to protect it nationwide, or to get any protection for a trademark you have not yet begun to use in commerce.
To protect a great idea for a brand name or slogan that you want to use in business, contact a trademark attorney to apply for a trademark registration. If you have an idea for a name, slogan, or title that you do not plan to use in business, it cannot be protected- just keep it a secret!
Trade Secret and Patent Protection for Recipes and Formulas
Recipes and formulas are not protected by copyright or trademark law. The only way they can be protected is by patenting them or keeping them as trade secrets. A recipe or formula may be patented if it is new and not an obvious combination of known recipes or formulas.Patents grant you exclusive rights to an invention for a period of 20 years.
However, many recipes and formulas, such as the formula for coca cola, are kept as trade secrets because they are difficult to reverse-engineer from the finished product. Trade secret protection can last indefinitely as long as you keep the information confidential and restrict access to it.
Logos
Logos can be protected by both copyright and trademark law. To be protected by copyright, they must have a minimum level of originality. A geometric shape alone is not sufficiently original, however most logos are. To be protected by trademark law, there must be an intent to use it in commerce.
Copyright protection lasts the lifetime of the author, plus 70 years. However, it only protects against copying of the trademark. If another business independently develops their own, strikingly similar logo, you are out of luck. Copyright law does not stop them from doing that.
Trademark protection can last indefinitely as long as the logo is in use in commerce, however a trademark registration must be renewed periodically. A trademark registration protects against another business using a confusingly similar mark, regardless of whether they copied your design.
Conclusion
This is a brief introduction to the protection of logos and names, titles, slogans, and other short phrases as intellectual property. To learn more about patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets, please see some of my other posts, some of which I have linked to in the body of this post.
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