THIS POST IS NOT INTENDED FOR CLAN RECRUITMENT

 

I am looking to make a policing clan when GTA V is released. If it is possible, does anyone know if I can register or trademark the name that I am going to use so that nobody else can take it?

This is free I think bud http://www.copyrighted.com/

This is free I think bud http://www.copyrighted.com/

You can't copyright a name. You can however copyright your clan's logo or other content.

 

If you're serious, get legal advice.

 

You can't trademark the name of an organisation, unless it's a product.

The best thing you could do is register it as a company name, which varies depending on where you are.

 

Either way, nothing gives you 'automatic' protection. You'd have to actually sue. Unless you are really willing to pay upwards of $1,000+ in legal fees, you're better off doing nothing and buying domain names so competitors can't get them.

You can't copyright a name. You can however copyright your clan's logo or other content.

 

If you're serious, get legal advice.

 

You can't trademark the name of an organisation, unless it's a product.

The best thing you could do is register it as a company name, which varies depending on where you are.

 

Either way, nothing gives you 'automatic' protection. You'd have to actually sue. Unless you are really willing to pay upwards of $1,000+ in legal fees, you're better off doing nothing and buying domain names so competitors can't get them.

Ok, thanks for the advice.

You can't copyright a name. You can however copyright your clan's logo or other content.

 

If you're serious, get legal advice.

 

You can't trademark the name of an organisation, unless it's a product.

The best thing you could do is register it as a company name, which varies depending on where you are.

 

Either way, nothing gives you 'automatic' protection. You'd have to actually sue. Unless you are really willing to pay upwards of $1,000+ in legal fees, you're better off doing nothing and buying domain names so competitors can't get them.

"Nothing gives automatic protection" is probably better phrased as "nothing gives automatic enforcement" (which is absolutely true: while a copyright entitles you to file DMCA takedown notices, the person who uploaded allegedly infringing content has the right to file a counter-notice, at which point the content provider must put the content back up until you sue the uploader and it gets worked out in the courts). Copyright *protection* generally means "you have copyright on this", and that *is* automatic literally as soon as you create a work.

For US copyright law, at least, the ability to enforce is even less automatic than Jay described: you are not allowed to file an infringement lawsuit until you register your work. This means registering with the US Copyright Office (which takes time and costs money, and involves your name and address being put in the public record); while copyrighted.com says it provides "registration", this has no legal standing, and at best it provides evidence you had created something by such-and-such a date. That might (emphasis on might) help if the other person says "No, I made this first", but they could still say that even if you use such a site (there's certainly no rule saying they have to go to some third-party site to prove when they made it). It doesn't let you say "they should have known it was copyrighted", because there's no requirement to check a non-governmental database for if something is copyrighted.

Also, if you want to bring copyright into a discussion, it severely restricts your source material: if you're infringing on copyrighted material (e.g. the LSPD logo) in your copyrighted logo, you don't get copyright on the part you took from the copyrighted logo (if the changes to the underlying copyrighted work are worthy of copyright in their own right, you can stop others from using *those modifications*, but you don't magically get the right to use the original logo on your site). If you just add text, for instance, the thing you added has no copyright protection; the LCPD logo plus text has no copyright protection under US law for anyone besides R*, because all *you* could claim is the text (which isn't protected).

If you're using a logo from a game, or from a police department whose logo is copyrighted, you should know that they probably *have* registered their copyright, meaning large penalties for infringement, and they might actually care if you're filing a lawsuit involving your own infringement.

TL;DR: Don't bother with copyright, it's not suited for what you want it for. That's not what it's designed for, not what it's intended for, and not what it works for.