Trademark and Copyrights

In class, we had talked a lot about copyright and trademarks with brands, companies, and advertising. When it comes to brands we talked about the 4 types of branding, compelled disclosure, dilutionm and trademark protection.

The 4 types of branding are:

• Trade Mark - this is the design and logo of your product

• Trade Name - the name of your product

• Service Mark - this is only for when you are selling a service rather than a product

• Trade Dress - this is what the packaging of your product or service is going to look like

The 4 types of compelled disclosure (4 P's) are:

• Prominence - the size

• Placement - where is it going to be

• Presentation - "reasonable person" understands

• Proximity - disclosure close to claim

We also talked about the dilution, this is blurring or tarnishment of brands. Blurring is when their is confusion with the consumers and tarnishment is when there is damage to the brand. The trademark dilution act os 1995 had 3 safe harbors

1. Comparative ads

2. Journalistic act

3. Non profit

A deceptive advertisment is when a representation or mission of that brand is likelyt o mislead to consumers or when someone relied on this information and it was false or not entirely the truth. An example of this is when Colgate toothpaste used 2 pictures of someones smile where in one picture they had whitened the teeth and the other discolored them a little to make it seem like their toothpaste really made your teeth turn from that color yellow to white. It was misleading because the pictures were false advertising.

When it comes to your brand and the trademark, you need protection over it to make sure that no one else can use that trademark name for their products. The spectrum of trademark protection consists of 5 different levels in order from the most to least protection.

1. Fanciful - this is made up

2. Arbitatry - no connection

3. Descriptive - literal

4. Suggestive - mental association

5. Generic - not trademarkable