Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Greg London" <email AT greglondon.com>]

Howdy!

Trademark has to be defended by the owner or
it can become public domain. If you try to
trademark "Kleenex (tm) tissue paper", and
then everyone starts calling all tissue paper
a Kleenex, then you, as trademark holder,
have to show effort in keeping "Kleenex" a
trademark, an adjective, or else it can fall
into a normal common noun in english use,
which is public domain, and not your exclusive
property anymore.

Copyright does not have to be defended to
remain your exclusive right. If Alice
copies your work and you don't defend your
copyright, your copyright is still yours,
and if Bob then later copies your work,
you can still sue Bob.

if your comic character is rampantly
copied by fan-sites, you can choose not
to sue them, and still sue Marvel if they
put your character in their storyline.

Trademark and Copyright are just handled differently in the law.

As far as CC working with trademarks, the problem is that
trademarks cost money, and must be defended (costing more
money), so if you're going to trademark something, you
might as well just get a lawyer, cause some boiler plate
from CC won't do much good.

Copyright doesn't cost anything. It's automatic as soon
as the work is in fixed form. You can register the work
for $30, but it't not required for protection. Therefore,
its possible to use a CC boilerplate license on your work,
and you don't ahve to worry about expenses compared to
Trademarks.

I think I have a section about trademarks somewhere in here:
http://www.greglondon.com/dtgd/html/draftingthegiftdomain.html

IANAL

Greg



Sigmascape1 AT cs.com said:
> Hello!
>
> I am new to the list. This is my first post.
>
> Over the years, I've found intellectual property issues interesting,
> especially in the entertainment world. As a comic book fan, its really
> interesting to read about issue relating to 'who owns what characters.' I
> realize that CC is primarily concerned with copyright issues, and the 
> various
> ways to free or partially free content by using various licenses. What about
> trademarks? For example, is there any way to create, using my comic book
> interest, a character, establish a formal or informal trademark on the
> character, and then create comic book content that would be then licensed
> under some sort of CC license, and use CC or a CC-like license the entire 
> way?
>
>>From what I have read while researching IP, a trademark must be 'defended' 
>>so
>> that it is preserved. Wouldn't the same be true of a standard copyright? 
>> If I
>> wrote a poem, and wanted to reserve all rights to it using the current
>> copyright law, wouldn't I have to defend it against rampant copying or
>> protect it against someone else claiming ownership?
>
> Hopefully, I am making sense. I'm just curious how far CC and CC-like 
> concepts
> can be pushed when it comes to complete, end-to-end concepts relating to 
> some
> IP.
>
> Thanks!!!
>
> MLF
> _______________________________________________
> cc-licenses mailing list
> cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-licenses
>
>


-- 
Draft the Gift Domain:
Put Free/Libre/Open/Public licensing
concepts directly into Copyright Law.
http://www.greglondon.com/dtgd/html/draftingthegiftdomain.html