Copyrights

Safeguarding your creative expressions

Often, when people think of copyrighting something, they think of books or manuscripts.     In reality, there is a vast amount of things that can be the subject of a copyright, which can be a powerful form of protection in its own right.  Forge IP brings its own creativity to the ways in which you can protect your creative expressions.

Visual Arts

Literary works are probably the most well-known copyrighted item. But this includes not only books, but many other types of writings.  Short stories, poems, articles, press releases, blog posts, and websites can all be copyrighted.

Moreover, the written word is not the only visual art form that is copyrightable.  For example, any sort of creative imagery can be the subject of a copyright, including photographs, drawings, paintings, and sculptures.  Even architectural works can be protected.

Performing Arts

Are you a singer or musician? A dancer or choreographer?  A movie producer?  Chances are, if you create something that is performed, it can enjoy the protection of a copyright.

Musical, theatrical, and choreographed works are all subject to the protection of copyrights.  For example, if you’re a singer-songwriter, not only can you copyright your lyrics as a literary work, but you can also copyright the entire musical piece, as well as a sound recording of your performance of the song.  If you perform a dance, as long as it is recorded, it is copyrightable.  All different types of audiovisual works can obtain copyright protection, including not only movies, but also things such as video podcasts and recorded webcasts.

Software

Perhaps you’ve heard, “you can’t patent software.”  That’s not exactly true (at least in the U.S.), but it does present some challenges.  However, copyrights are another way to try to protect some of your software innovations.

Various aspects of software have creative elements.  For example, the computer code for a program can be copyrighted as a literary work.  As another example, the graphical user interface of a program can be protected as a graphic work.  By using copyrights in this manner while simultaneously seeking patent protection, it is possible to assemble strong IP protection for your software.