Can someone please give me a concrete answer?

[laylaw]

I need some advice on copyright infringement. I am a lay person
researching copyright information and trademark information.
I have read that an intangible idea may not be copyrighted.

An example: Someone puts up a web site and claims ownership to of space dust and gets a trademark and copyright for this web site that sells space dust. He sells space dust sucessfully as a "novelty". The novelty protects him from the fraud aspect.

The intangible idea..selling spacedust. The tangible result...the trademark, copyright of web site and deeds
of ownership sold as a novelty item.

I have a similar intangile idea...to sell space dust for example.
I put up a web site also. The web address is spacerocks.com
The original had the name of spacedust.com
I copyright my site spacerocks.com also.
I trademark my website also and use the name in my trademarked logo.
I do not copy and html or words from the site that sells space dust.
I deside i want to sell space dust also. What would keep me from doing this? I call it space powder. Would this be a copyright
infringement? I also copyright my deeds which are completely
different from the original sites deeds of ownership of space dust.
Also i sell my deeds to space dust as a novelty item.

These are similar ideas. I have read you can't copyright an idea but you can copy right a tangible result. Am I ok if I do this? Is spacerocks.com to much like spacedust.com because of the word space in my url?

Please help if you can. I need an answer from someone who is
more up on these legal questions.
If not what would be legal? A completely different url like moondust.com etc.

I have a quest for this information because I don't want to infringe on another website or trademark.

Thanks in advance to anyone who talkes the time to give me a sincere answer that is easy to understand.

 

[freebird]

Let us start by defining what each term means:

Copyright - This is protection for "works of authorship", e.g. the words in a book, the images in a movie or in a graphic file. It has nothing to do with a name, only the result of an effort.

Trademark - This is protection for a trade name so that the use does not result in a "likelihood of confusion" with another's trade name.

In your instance there are a number of issues and they deal with trademark. The more unique a trade name, the more likely it will get protection. It ranges from "generic" words which have no protection (words in the English language cannot be protected otherwise nobody could use our language to communicate!) to unique and arbitrary which are made up words -- Xerox for instance. In between are descriptive words Johnson's Band Aids or more toward a combo of unique and descriptive, Coca Cola.

If the item you are selling is space dust, dust from outer space, then it would likely be almost impossible to get a trademark for the sale of the product. People have a right to describe the product and it is space dust. Space rocks might have the same problem.

However, let us say you both want to call something "space dust" and someone else calls them "space rocks", it is possible that there might be an issue of trademark infrigement but we'd need to know more. What are you selling exactly? When did each of you begin selling the product? Has someone filed and received a federal trademark for selling the product under a trade name?

I think this is a good beginning to explaining some of the issues.

Originally posted by laylaw
I need some advice on copyright infringement. I am a lay person
researching copyright information and trademark information.
I have read that an intangible idea may not be copyrighted.

An example: Someone puts up a web site and claims ownership to of space dust and gets a trademark and copyright for this web site that sells space dust. He sells space dust sucessfully as a "novelty". The novelty protects him from the fraud aspect.

The intangible idea..selling spacedust. The tangible result...the trademark, copyright of web site and deeds
of ownership sold as a novelty item.

I have a similar intangile idea...to sell space dust for example.
I put up a web site also. The web address is spacerocks.com
The original had the name of spacedust.com
I copyright my site spacerocks.com also.
I trademark my website also and use the name in my trademarked logo.
I do not copy and html or words from the site that sells space dust.
I deside i want to sell space dust also. What would keep me from doing this? I call it space powder. Would this be a copyright
infringement? I also copyright my deeds which are completely
different from the original sites deeds of ownership of space dust.
Also i sell my deeds to space dust as a novelty item.

These are similar ideas. I have read you can't copyright an idea but you can copy right a tangible result. Am I ok if I do this? Is spacerocks.com to much like spacedust.com because of the word space in my url?

Please help if you can. I need an answer from someone who is
more up on these legal questions.
If not what would be legal? A completely different url like moondust.com etc.

I have a quest for this information because I don't want to infringe on another website or trademark.

Thanks in advance to anyone who talkes the time to give me a sincere answer that is easy to understand.

 

[laylaw]

I am talking about a real web site

I am talking about a real web site that exists but sells property
as a novelty. He has a trademark and several copyrights to his site and "deed" of ownership. He does not own the property but
sells it like he does. The protection he has is his copyright and trademark but his idea is open to anyone who can sell the "novelty" of a deed that doesn't exist in reality. The property he is selling is the Moon. Thats right I said the Moon. Anyone can sell the Moon I think as a novelty as long as there is no copyright infringement of trademark infringement. Is this correct?
Can you help with this question? Thanks

 

[RaisetheBar]

Why dont you hire an attorney and have these issues answered by a professional? Obviously you intend to make money from your site its a commercial venture. Why then solicit free advice that is probably worthless anyway? You have to spend money to make money, hire an attorney.

 

[freebird]

Originally posted by RaisetheBar
Why dont you hire an attorney and have these issues answered by a professional? Obviously you intend to make money from your site its a commercial venture. Why then solicit free advice that is probably worthless anyway? You have to spend money to make money, hire an attorney.

I wouldn't say that a discussion here is worthless. It's just that if it is important and you want/need to be sure about an issue then you should invest the money into having a professional hear all the elements and provide a legal opinion.

The truth is that I have no idea of what you are talking about and even less why anyone would buy it or the Brooklyn Bridge. I'm not sure that I understand the copyright and trademark protection you are claiming he has. Have they been filed or is this just another novelty?

 

[RaisetheBar]

Free Bird: your pt is well taken. The discussion is not pointless, however I said what I did for several reasons.

I did a search for the websites in question. It seems obvious that the person is out to make money on it. If that is the case, then you have to spend money to make money and I sort of resent offering advice to people who are already involved in a commercial venture. If they are making money or intend to make money they should put their money where their mouth is and pay for the legal advice.

The other reason is that I could not make hide nor hair out of what the person is saying. First off, he or she starts talking about an "intangible idea." From my experience, that has really nothing to do with copyrights and has everything to do with patent law. It seems the person has gotten mixed up already and has done a little research and come up with this phrase from patent law.

The other strange thing is she/he is talking about the name of the url! If the freakin internic people (or whomever is handing out urls these days) allowed the name that what is the problem? Again it is not at all clear what the issue is.

Maybe if the person came back and explained it more. "The novelty protects him from the fraud..." See what I mean? What the heck is that supposed to mean???