How do trademarks, copyrights, and patents differ?
A. Trademarks indicate the source of a product or service. Copyrights bar unauthorized copying or distributing of original text, graphics, sounds, sculpture, and other works fixed in a tangible medium of expression. Patents bar making, using, or selling nonobvious inventions. A patent grants a monopoly for a limited time, 20 years from application date, in exchange for the inventor making public the best mode of the invention. Copyrights now last for about a century. Trademarks may endure without limit, as long as the mark distinctively indicates a single source and does not become a generic descriptor. Original mask works , the typology of a semiconductor chip, may be protected similar to copyright but for a shorter term of 10 years. A single product may be protected by patent, trademark, copyright, mask work, and trade secret.
