 Tech Talk, Copyrights, Trademarks, and Patents. Recently I did a video on software licenses, which people seem to really enjoy, so I thought I'd do something on, again, copyrights, trademarks, and patents. I'm going to try to leave my personal views out of this as much as possible because that could be a very long conversation. I am going to recommend checking out the video by CGP Gray called Copyrights Forever in a Day, great, great video talking about the history of copyrights and where we may have gone wrong, and also if you Google when patents attack, it's another one, it's a couple of years old, but it's a great little talk radio program, it's in two parts, think together there are 40 or 50 minutes, but great, great talk on patents, patent rolls, and software patents as well. I just want to give a quick overview on the three different things and how they differ, they do overlap in some aspects. First let's talk about copyrights. A copyright in the mid-80s, before that you had to register for copyright, right now since the 80s, you draw something, you take a picture of something, you film something, you create a song, you create anything, right away you have a copyright on that. You don't have to register it, registering it can help prove that you created that one, you did create it, you said you created it, but as soon as you create something you draw a picture, you have a copyright on it, meaning no one is allowed to copy it without your permission. It doesn't mean that people aren't allowed to make copies, it's just that they need your permission, and basically you would license that out to them, so either people come to you and say I'd like to make copies of that, you say sure you can make this many copies, but you gotta pay me this fee or whatever you agree on, it's whatever you agree on, I can say yeah you can make as many copies as you want, but you've got to stand on your head while you're making those copies, it's just an agreement between me and you, unless you agree with me on that, then you don't get to make copies. Now to alleviate people having to come to people, if I just want to be like you can make copies under certain circumstances, I can use a license that people are familiar with such as the Creative Commons license, which allows me to go to their website, check whether I want people to be able to use this for either commercial or non-commercial use, whether people are allowed to modify it, whether people can modify it as long as they allow other people to modify it, certain things like that, I check it, it creates a license for me, it's very easy to understand, it has simple images that are internationally understood, and then there's also the written out license, and if you attach that to your what you create, then people don't need to come to you, they know they can use it now, will people still come to you in some cases for commercial use? Yes, if you're making videos on YouTube and you want to use some music and some creative comments, you just go ahead and do it, it's not a problem, but if you're a big company, TV company, movie company, you can't just go online and you could, but you don't normally just go online and go, oh look, they made the song, I really want to use the song in my movie, they say I can, I'm just going to use it, because you don't know who that person is, they could have taken the song somewhere else, put it online and said, I made this under the creative comments license, and I'm going to give you an example, there's a musician who goes by the name of Brad Sucks, that's his artistic name, his real name is Brad Turkett, I just slaughtered his name, anyway, a while ago I was listening to, or reading an article of him talking about him making music and MTV calling him up and being like, hey, we want to use your song on one of our segments, and he said, oh great, they're like, well we want to pay you too, he's like, even better, and basically big companies will want to pay you, even if you're saying you can use it for free, because they want to make sure that they have some security that if someone comes along and says, hey I made that song, not that guy, now you know, you're on the hook because they paid you, or the other way around, it's kind of a hard leg to stand on, so that's copyrights as short as I can get it, oh copyrights also last have been extended, extended, extended in a service, personal use, you draw something, you take a picture of something, you have a copyright on that till 70 years after you die, so you create something now, you live another 50 years, and it goes 70 years beyond that, which means you create something the day, it could be 120, 130 years before anyone can make a copy of that without your permission. Again, I suggest Googling Patents Attack, it's a two-part radio talk show, and I suggest you listen to it, it's a few years old, but still really great information in there, but basically patents, unlike copyrights, which are on artistic creations, patents are for technical aspects, how something works, and when you get a patent on something, you apply for the patent, it has to be approved, and you have that patent usually for 20 years, at which point in most cases it can be extended if you apply for renewal, certain areas such as medicines supposedly aren't supposed to be able to be renewed, but there's always loopholes in everything, especially when the government's involved, so patents for software did not originally exist, there are certain things you cannot patent, and one of them, at least back in the day, was software in the 80s and early 90s, and before 60s and 70s, there was some software around back then, you could get copyrights on what you create, but you couldn't get patents, so before the mid 90s the only way you get a patent on software was to have it be specific to a piece of hardware, so if you had a piece of hardware that you had a patent on, and there was software that ran that hardware, it was only good for that hardware, the software would also be covered under the patent, like example back in the day, early 90s before they started giving out software patents, Microsoft had two or three patents on certain pieces of software that went along with hardware, they were still a very large, very wealthy company, even without the software patents. Going on to trademarks, trademarks are something that a lot of people don't think about. Basically a trademark is supposed to guarantee basically that this is genuine. If I go and buy a Disney product, I want to make sure that it truly was made by Disney, the trademark can can tell me that, because no one is allowed to make that, you know, use that trademark, so it's not a knockoff that looks kind of like a Disney product, but isn't a Disney product. I can supposed to be able to tell that this is a true Disney product or whatever company by the Disney logo. You can also trademark other things such as characters, Mickey Mouse for examples, not only under copyright, but it is also under trademark. Now how long do trademarks last for? Well you apply for a trademark, you pay your fee, and it's good for 10 years. At the end of 10 years you can renew that again for a fee, but you also need to provide proof that you're still using that trademark. I don't know all the requirements basically if you haven't used it and you can't prove that you've been using it, you can't renew it, but if you're constantly using it such as Mickey Mouse, they continue making Mickey Mouse cartoons, Mickey Mouse t-shirts, Mickey Mouse products, even if the copyright was to run out, they can keep renewing the trademark on Mickey Mouse for as long as they want. So again this is a very compact view on all three, but copyrights, patents, and trademarks all kind of work together, but in different areas. Some I believe are more important than the others and but all three I feel are abused in in the world today. I'm not going to get into that again, that could be something that you could talk about for hours, but again check out CGP Gray's Copyright Forever of the Day and also When Patents Attack. These are great videos and a great video and a great talk show talking about it. So check those out. Thank you for watching. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did be sure to give it a thumbs up. I like it, comment, share it, let me know what you think. And as always please visit my website FilmsByChris.com. That's Chris the K. There should be a link in the description. As always I hope that you have a great day.