ICT - Unit 30: P6

Registered trademark

Trademark is recognizable sign, design or expression that identifies services or product with specific source from all others. Trademark can be owned by individual, company or any legal entity. The registered trademark symbol is ® and it shows that the word before it or symbol is a trademark.

Intellectual property

Intellectual property refers to creation of the mind, for example music, literature, inventions, words, phrases and design. Intellectual property laws give to owned exclusive rights, some of those rights are copyrights, patents, industrial design rights and the rights that protect trademarks, trade dress and trade secrets. Intellectual property rights are themselves a kind of property, called intangible property.

Legal pitfalls in editing graphics

Nobody can use graphics and logos that have trademark, nor make similar logo. If somebody would do such a thing, owner of the trademark could sue him because it is illegal.

Copyright issues

The biggest problem with copyrights is copyright infringement also known as piracy. It occurs when you copy, download, install, fileshare or distribute digitized material in the form of computer software programs and entertainment media without permission from the owner of copyrights. Piracy is nowadays committed by incredibly huge amount of people that illegally download music or movies or watch them online on illegal websites. Problem is that the only way how to completely stop piracy is the total surveillance over the internet by the government, although that could easily happen in case of some big hack attack.

Gaining permission to use copyrighted product

In order to gain permission to use copyrighted product you have to contact the owner of the copyrights and obtain from him the writing permission. It is important to have permission written and signed by the owner because without it there is real evidence about getting such a permission.