Legal Question in Intellectual Property in Washington

Intellectual property

I have had an idea for a website for months, that I thought was very original, but I recently found another website that has a feature that is very similar. Some of the ideas are almost identical, but not everything. My site is going to be a year long contest, and there's only is a 3 month feature. My site will allow users to dictate who's going to be in the final round of 64, theirs is picked by employees, then winners by the users, just like theirs, and identical to what NCAA basketball tournament uses. There's numerous differences, but I'm curious if that falls under any copyright laws. The colors of the site, logo and domain name are totally different though. And the process of picking a winner is totally different. Can someone give me some idea if this is considered copyright infringement. Thanks


Asked on 6/16/08, 12:00 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Mason Boswell Boswell IP Law

Re: Intellectual property

There are three different areas of Intellectual Property that may be at play here:

1) Copyright. Copyright protects forms of expression, and gives the original creator exclusive rights to use it. For example, your website's words and layout may be protectable forms of expression using copyright law.

2) Patents. Patents protect a method, apparatus, composition of matter, and so forth. The way your website works, the method you use for choosing winners, and so forth may all be protectable with patents.

3) Trademarks. Trademarks protect source identifiers, such as logos or names that identify something as coming from you. For example, your logo, colors, and domain name may all be protectable using trademarks.

The best thing to do is see an intellectual property attorney to develop a strategy to determine what IP you have, and how you should protect it.

Hope that helps,

- Mason Boswell

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Answered on 6/16/08, 4:19 pm


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