Legal Issues?

General questions related to the company.

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linuxfreak
Posts:52
Joined:Tue Jul 26, 2011 7:36 pm
Location:Paarl, Western Cape, South Africa
Legal Issues?

Post by linuxfreak » Mon Dec 03, 2012 8:35 pm

Hello All:
I have'nt been posting in these forms or developing much lately because of 9th grade, anywhoo.
I was wondering how all this copyrighting and patenting stuff works, how do register a copyright and how much would it cost. I just want to know, my os is not yet, by far complete or even close, but for the future. I dont know whether or not I will continue with it, I have hope that some day i will open my basement and find my old computer there and rediscover my os, and then make something useful out of it. :)

regards

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Warsome
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Joined:Sun Nov 18, 2007 3:13 am

Re: Legal Issues?

Post by Warsome » Wed Dec 05, 2012 1:18 am

It all depends on the country you live in to be honest. In England and Wales for example, Copyright is free and automatic as soon as original content has been created. You do not need to register it, you can post it to yourself is a secure sealed postal bag that has a postal date recording and never open it. This is proof enough to any court that you are the original owner if the date on the sealed package predates your opponents work and both works are the same. Its important to realise though that you cannot copyright an idea or a name. It must be a work of art, source code or an original image.

Patents allow protection of an idea, providing that the idea is not obvious to a person who has a normal skill in the art and that the idea is a novelty. Also a requirement is that the idea has not been disclosed before the date of filing. Patents are never free no matter which country you are from. There are very strict guidelines as to what can and can not be patented.

Trademarks protect names an logo's The name and logo must not misrepresent you or cause confusion between yourself and a competitor in the same business field and must be original, some names cannot be trademarked.

For example Mike Ro soft and Microsoft.

For more information, please contact the government body responsible for registrations.

From Michael :)

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