I think there have been at least 2 or 3 threads on this topic in last couple of years.
I think its always about what is morally right (subjective) vs legally allowed (objective).
If something is legally not allowed (eg copying a protected patent or TM), it doesn't mean that someone won't infringe your intellectual property (TM, patent or copyright law in US). It just gives you a right to sue for this infringment (eg damages, cease and desist etc).
Then there is the question of international enforceability of your rights thay may be protected just locally (for example only in US under US law).
To summon up, a one man show knifemaker would have a really tough going trying to protect his patent or TM against a Pakistani with no address.
Short summary from USPTO:
Trademark | Patent | Copyright | |
|---|
| What's legally protected? | A word, phrase, design, or a combination that identifies your goods or services, distinguishes them from the goods or services of others, and indicates the source of your goods or services. | Technical inventions, such as chemical compositions like pharmaceutical drugs, mechanical processes like complex machinery, or machine designs that are new, unique, and usable in some type of industry. | Artistic, literary, or intellectually created works, such as novels, music, movies, software code, photographs, and paintings that are original and exist in a tangible medium, such as paper, canvas, film, or digital format. |
|---|
| What's an example? | Coca-Cola® for soft drinks | A new type of hybrid engine | Song lyrics to “Let It Go”
from "Frozen" |
|---|
What are the benefits
of federal protection? | Protects the trademark from being registered by others without permission and helps you prevent others from using a trademark that is similar to yours with related goods or services. | Safeguards inventions and processes from other parties copying, making, using, or selling the invention without the inventor’s consent. | Protects your exclusive right to reproduce, distribute, and perform or display the created work, and prevents other people from copying or exploiting the creation without the copyright holder’s permission. |
|---|
You can TM your makers mark, you can patent a knife (particular tehicalities and so on, just do a quick google on any patent database and search for “kitchen knife" or “hunting knife) and in particulqr cases you could also copyright your knife (hard to say). From wiki on US copyright law:
"Works subject to copyright law:
The United States copyright law protects "original works of authorship," fixed in a tangible medium
[8] including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and other intellectual works. This protection is available to both published and unpublished works. Copyright law includes the following types of works:
- Literary
- Musical
- Dramatic
- Pantomimes and choreographic works
- Pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works
- Audio-visual works
- Sound recordings
- Derivative works
- Compilations
- Architectural works[9]
Idea–expression dichotomyEdit
Copyright law protects the "expression" of an idea, but copyright does not protect the "idea" itself. This distinction is called the
idea–expression dichotomy.
[10] The distinction between "idea" and "expression" is fundamental to copyright law. From the
Copyright Act of 1976 (
17 U.S.C. § 102):
In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.
For example, a paper describing a political theory is copyrightable. The paper is the
expression of the author's ideas about the political theory. The theory itself is just an
idea, and is not copyrightable. Another author is free to describe the same theory in their own words without infringing on the original author's copyright.
[11]
Although fundamental, the idea–expression dichotomy is often difficult to put into practice. Reasonable people can disagree about where the unprotectable "idea" ends and the protectable "expression" begins. As Judge
Learned Hand put it, "Obviously, no principle can be stated as to when an imitator has gone beyond copying the 'idea,' and has borrowed its 'expression.' Decisions must therefore inevitably be ad hoc."
[12]".
