Over time, I have had many cool ideas, 3D and other, but one thing I didn’t have any cool ideas about was,
How The Hell Do I Get A Copyright, So No One Can Steal The Damn Thing!
I looked a while ago but I don’t think that I was looking at the right kind of coryright, I don’t know…
Man I’m Screwd :<
No one can copyright an idea, only a specific expression of one. You can’t even patent an idea.
The definitive source of information on U.S. copyright law is straight from the horse’s mouth at the Library of Congress website: http://www.loc.gov/copyright. Oddly enough, this is the agency that administers copyrights.
And, by the way, no matter what idea you have, or how “cool” you think it is, you are not the first one to have thought of it. %| You can stop someone from blatantly stealing your work outright, but the fact that someone else comes up with something even “uncannily” similar to yours is not prima facie evidence of actual infringement.
arr but in patent terms I.e. an invention.
you may be the first person to come up with a solution to a problem. (someone else very well could have come up with the idea before, but if they havn’t patented it then thats their problem LOL)
this you need to pay about $25,000 USD to get protection on, so its not really worth it is it (unless its a damn good idea)
copyright is very different, and doesn’t mean much.
Alltaken
Well, in the U.S. copyright is free and virtually automatic, so simply putting a copyright notice with your work would be sufficient. But patents are NOT like this, they are very expensive.
joeedh
next year microsoft will patent Air, and we are forced to pay from every breathtake. start saving now, and you might last the year.
.b
no the will patent SEX. then everyone will be bugged.
Alltaken
In the graphic deisng world you can only patent or copyright things that are created by yourself. You can copyright anything you created, this means you make people informed that you don’t want that people copy it. When you want a real copyright, that means people may use it but pay for it, you have to pay for that. Same with patent. If you copyright or patent a thing, Here in the Netherlands you can choose to pay 500 euro to patent 1 things for 50 years afther your death. That mean everyone may use it, but then the law says the person has to pay or pay a bill. This is really evil, and we should do that with the Blender Logo and patent the logo on a virtual person which lifes forever, and the logo will be patented forever 
Which I did with something who’s called JD-Multi, and is a invisible person which will life forever. 
The same idea with virtual person is used by many companies. So when they can’t get the bussines running naymore the virtual person with the real bank account is totally bankrupt, while the real boss didn’t lose anything from the money he received over the years. Real smart and allowed here. 8)
What I ment was things like Characters, sundialsvc4, ideas for characters, on paper, and 3D.
Any way, so all I have to do is put the 'ol © on my work, and it’s mine?
Yes.
The trick is ‘enforcing’ the copyright. That is up to you. If you find someone using it, YOU have to pay a lawyer, YOU have to file a lawsuit, YOU have to follow up on it.
Like others have said, you can’t copright the “idea for a character”. You can copyright the drawn/rendered character.
And I’m guessing that this same method applys to names…?
I imagine it depends on what that name is. For example, I doubt you could copyright O with it being in the alphabet. But something like cheeri-o would be ok.
It might be tricky with common names like andy but I guess as long as you associate the name with a definitive character like Woody in Toy Story it would be ok. A better idea is to have a unique name like Buzz Lightyear.
Yeah, corpyrighting O whould be wrong
So does the name go with the character, I mean…
O
-|-
/
O-Man © 2004 O
???
How will they implement copy protections?
Will STDs proliferate (even more) after MS takes over?
I think that would have to be a Trademark rather than a copyright. Trademarks have to be registered and do cost money.
How will they implement copy protections?[/quote]
Who’d copy it anyway? If M$ owned it, it would have an overly long and complicated installation procedure as usual. Commonly known as foreplay. Then when things finally got rolling, there’d be no end of error messages like “Could not mount floppy - disk inserted into incorrect slot. You have performed an illegal operation and I’m going to sleep now”.
Well, M$ products are susceptible to more viruses than most.
If you guys think MS patents are ridiculous, behold Method of concealing partial baldness.
Patents are useless if you don’t have the money to defend them. Look up the story of the man who invented the curing process for rubber. Natural rubber will turn into sticky goo under heat, but under extreme heat a guy discovered that it will harden permanently to what you know as “rubber.” It was so simple that everyone did it without paying royalties and he went bankrupt suing them.
It is, however, possible to get a patent for as little as $650 in the US. Most countries rule that if an idea was published or patented elsewhere it is unpatentable, but it is still legal to breach the patent if it isn’t filed in the world patent office or that specific country which it is being used in.
Thomas Alva Edison called patents “a license to steal” and he was right. They are the perfect lawyer’s invention. They look and sound impressive enough, but are toothless and, by the time the patent is actually issued, obsolete. Your pour buckets and buckets of money into a lawyer’s mouth.
You know if you take every software ever made and compare them, you will find nothing but copies here and there. Don’t believe in patent and even if I did I will call it economic censorship because the amount of money you have to spend to patent the stupid thing. And they don’t even suggest patent because then there were be no way of making mass production and companys often want to make changes. Medicine shouldn’t be patent either, a cure a better life will come much quickly if information is share and don’t give me that money to make further development either. Drug companys ignore cures for the sake of profit and are only interest in treatment.
Patents for inventions and what now are crap, but for things like characters (what I was interested in…) and company names, copyrighting is definatly use full…
“Did you hear what Microsoft is up to now? exra strength garbage bags! wait, that’s the other Microsoft…”