Intellectual Property Rights

A quick guide for reference with regards to how you could label your works. Let's start with the most common symbol, the ©. Thats Copyright, and as such can be used as an unregistered right. That means you don't have to register anything to any sort of patent office or similar, to be able to slap it onto every other thing you do. It's also the case that the symbol it self is rather useless, unless you actually in a legal situation have rights in an issue. Then, the use of a © can make the party who used the property in bad will may actually be punished harder than if you had not used the symbol. It can be noted that in the U.S. you can register a Copyright, which is why you sometimes can se a reference number beside the ©. There's no real legal difference to doing this though, besides that it's a bit easier to support your Copyright in a legal situation if it's registered.

Secondly, the ™ and ®. You should only use the ® if you actually have registered the trade mark. If you haven't, but intend to register it, use the ™, that means it's a mark of your trade, but you don't want to spend any money protecting it.