JONATHAN BAY
Patent Attorney
Patents
Utility Patents protect useful applications of IDEAS, typically products, processes, machines, software and more.
Design Patents fill the gap in copyright law for protection of the appearances of functional, useful articles.
Patent rights in the U.S. are solely federal in origin and are acquired from the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office.
Trademarks
Trademarks and Service Marks protect brand names, phrases and/or symbols distinctive of a single source of the branded goods or services, and represent the “goodwill” of the brand (which is easier to think of as “reputation”).
The U.S. Patent & Trademark Office does issue registrations from which flow federal rights. But there are also common law rights acquired by simple adoption and use of a mark in commerce.
Copyrights
Copyrights protect fixed expressions (which rights are, for works of authorship authored after January 1 of 1978, exclusively federal in origin).
Trade Secret law is available to protect non-publicly disclosed Intellectual property.
Also, there are alternatives for protection of Designs other than Design Patent and Copyright.