Copyright is the exclusive legal right,
given to a creator to copy, print, publish, perform, film, record, or make
derivative works of their creative work, and to authorize others to do the
same. This prevents other people from using someone else’s creative work
(novel, poem, play, song, photograph, painting, movie, software) without
compensating them for the creator’s effort.
The United States and some other countries
do recognize cases where you can use someone else’s copyrighted work without
their permission for limited purposes. This is Fair use, permitting you to use
a minimal portion of their work for such transformational purposes as
criticism, news, education, research, and parody, such that you are not harming
the market for the original work. An example of Fair Use is showing a
short clip of a movie during a movie review, or showing a photograph of a
painting in a news report about the painting being auctioned for a record
amount.
Note that words, names, and titles are not
protected by copyright. After all, it would not be to anyone’s benefit if you
were not legally allowed to say someone else’s name. write down a word they
made up, or display the title of a book without their creator’s permission.
However, words, names and short phrases
(as well as logos) can be protected as trademarks used to identify commercial
products and services — such as “McDonald’s” restaurants and “Nike” shoes — and
you cannot use someone else’s trademark for a competitive product or service.
This is to prevent consumers from being confused about who actually made that
product or performs that service. You can find out whether someone has
registered a word, phrase or logo as a trademark with the US Patent and
Trademark Office through this government website: Search trademark database.
However, to be safe, you should have a trademark attorney search for you, as
some people may be using a trademark without registering it with the USPTO.
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