As the name implies, “copyright” is, literally, the “right to copy.” Historically, the concept of copyright became important when the press was invented. Before the press was invented, content could only be copied by hand. As a result, it was easier to limit the availability of copies of any work.
As per the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), one primary purpose of copyright is “to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive rights to their respective writings and discoveries.” 1 However, there is much flexibility regarding the mentioned “rights.”
For example, many corporations have “rights” related to who is licensed to produce merchandise related to copyrighted content. Disney, for instance, aggressively asserts its rights and stops any and all unlicensed replication of its copyrighted work. In this case, not only is Disney maximizing its profits from the royalty collected from licensed products, but it is also using copyrights to limit rivals in terms of the title of movies and other content. Because of the sheer amount of profit involved, Disney and other media corporations pour millions of dollars into the extension of the duration of copyright. 2
Creative Commons, on the other hand, uses the very same mechanism of copyright to encourage the sharing of content3.
As per the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, copyright protects “original works of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works, such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software, and architecture.”4 However, copyright does not apply to “ideas, concepts, systems, or methods of doing something”, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office5.
A trademark “identifies your goods or services”, according to the USPTO6. While a logo, a slogan, or a jingle are all forms of intellectual property, the main purpose differs from that of copyrighted content. A registered trademark offers the protection of the identity of an organization, whereas a copyrighted work is protected from unauthorized duplication and/or use of the content.
While an idea in writing, such as the design of a pixie dust manufacturing machine, can be copyrighted, the copyright does not protect anyone from reading a properly licensed book of the idea and implementing the described machine. In other words, the copyright says I cannot make a photocopy of the book that describes how to make said machine, but I am allowed to follow the instructions to make, market, and sell the machine.
A patent protects an invention, a method of doing something, or a design of a machine in terms of how parts interact to accomplish a purpose7.
Where a copyright may be used to prevent work from being copied or replicated, and a patent may be used to prevent the unlicensed implementation of an invention, the intellectual work protected by copyright and patent is published, available to the public. It is what can be done with this work that is potentially limited.
A trade secret, on the other hand, is not published, or, as the USPTO describes, “generally unknown to others.”8 Trade secrets are protected by the Economic Espionage Act, which was amended by the Defend Trade Secrets Act.
Any work that is either no longer protected by copyright, or is never protected by copyright, falls into the public domain category. Certain work sees a significant number of derivatives or adaptations as soon as it becomes public domain.[^9] It is notable that government publications fall into the public domain category by default.
In the specific area of software, the public domain category eventually evolved into CC0 (Creative Commons Zero), which is a designation that specifies “No Rights Reserved.”9
[^9] Wikipedia: Public Domain (CC BY 4.0)
There are four factors to evaluate and determine a fair use of copyrighted work:
For a physical copy of work, the first sale doctrine limits the rights of the holder of a copyrighted work. The party that legally purchases the copy of the copyrighted work can sell, lend, or give away the said physical copy.10