Should I Protect My Book With A Trademark Or A Copyright?

Should I protect my book using a copyright or a trademark? I was just asked this question on the phone today and I thought it was a good topic for a video. So I'm going to spend the next three minutes talking about it. I'm Angela Langlotz, trademark and copyright attorney. If you have trademark or copyright questions, drop them into the comments below. Don't forget to smash the like button. Follow me and you'll see all of the new material that I put out.

So today I got this question on the phone. People call me on the phone a lot and she said, Well, I have a book that I've written, should I protect it using a copyright or a trademark? And I said, well, you can use both, but let's talk about the different ways that you can protect a book using a copyright versus a trademark. Now, copyright protects the author's right to the actual creative part of the book.

So when you write a book, you choose a topic and you outline the book. And there are there is the result, the book, of this thought process that you went through and the words that you chose. And all of that is your creative work that belongs to you as soon as it is, as we say, fixed in a tangible medium of expression. So in other words, as soon as you put those words down on the page, it belongs to you and no one else has the right to copy it.

That is what copyright protects. It protects the actual creative parts of the book, the way you laid it out and chose the words and all of that, that is your creative property and no one else has the right to copy it. So why then, people ask, would I register that copyright with the United States copyright office? Well, there's a couple of things that registration gets you. Registration gets you the right to sue in court for copyright infringement.

It also gets you the right to statutory damages that you don't have to prove in court. So if somebody copies, then they are liable to pay you damages even if you can't prove any damages from their copying. That's what a copyright registration gets you. What is a trademark and what good does that do? Well, a trademark protects. Excuse me, you got something in my eye today. A copyright. I'm sorry. A trademark protects the brand identity that may be on your book.

Now, in order to register a trademark for a book, you have to have a book series. So you can't have one book. It has to be at least two books before we can say, hey, I've got a series of books here that I want to protect with a trademark. And here is the distinctive trademark that I'm using with my books. So you have to have a book series, number one, and you have to have some sort of distinctive word or logo or phrase that you're using with your book series.

It might be, you know, Chicken Soup for the Soul. That's an example of a book series, The "For Dummies" series of instructional books put out by John Wiley and Sons Publishers is another example of a book series. So that's what I know about the difference between trademarks and copyrights when it comes to books. If you have trademark questions, drop them into the comments below. I love to answer those on future live video. You can find me online at TrademarkDoctor.net and you can also find me on Facebook at Facebook, dot com forward slash TrademarkDoctor.net.

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