Entertainment Law: Advantages of Having Trademarks & Copyrights

 

Benefits of Having Your Music Trademarked Copyrighted

By Emily Kulinowski

According to a 2021 year-end data report by MRC Data, “catalog records accounted for a stunning 82.1% of total recorded music consumption in the US in the second half of 2021.”

As creatives, it’s important to protect our music from possible infringement. You can ensure your music is protected by placing trademarks and copyrights on your music. Understanding how trademarks and music copyright works will help you protect your music and intellectual property from infringement.

How Trademarks & Copyright Works

The United States Patent and Trademark Office defines trademarks as “any word, phrase, symbols, design, or a combination of these things that identifies your goods or services. It’s how customers recognize you in the marketplace and distinguish you from your competitors.” 

“Music copyright designates legal ownership of a musical composition or sound recording. This ownership includes exclusive rights to redistribute and reproduce the work, as well as licensing rights that enable the copyright holder to earn royalties,” as stated in an article by Soundcharts.

When people apply trademarks and copyrights to their music, they are allowing their music to be recognized as their own and obtain the rights to that music.

Music copyright and trademarks hold a lot of benefits for musicians, and it’s important to know how important they are when it comes to entertainment law.

1.Provide Better Protection

Registering your music with a trademark or copyright is a great way to better protect it. Common law often isn’t able to protect things such as intellectual property infringement.

When your music is protected with trademarks and copyrights, you essentially give yourself the ability to own the use of your music. 

Trademarks allow others to identify that music as yours, while copyrights allow you as the owner to make money off of an infringer’s actions.

Make sure you stay up to date with your trademark registration. After it expires, it will fall under common law until you renew it.

2.Public Ownership

Trademarks and copyrights are open knowledge to the public. This open record allows you to be able to dispute any ownership claims for your music.

You as the creator are able to prove that you are the owner of the copyrights and trademarks, which protects you in claims of infringement.

Having this public record of copyright or trademark will be very helpful especially when infringers use your music without permission. 

Your copyrights are presumed to be yours, which means when infringers who are trying to cause serious harm to your music you have the ability to go directly to court against the infringer’s actions.

Benefits of Trademarks & Copyright- The Den Collective

Benefits of Trademarks & Copyright- The Den Collective

3.Protects Your Rights as Musicians

With music accessible at our fingertips, it’s common for ‘bootleg’ and parody versions of music to be created.

Sometimes infringers don’t even realize they are infringing your rights. Whether it’s intentional or not, others creating music based on yours can hinder your profitability.

Having trademarks and copyrights in place can help you prove you’re the rights holder and allow you to be compensated for the infringement.

The public record of trademarks and copyrights also gives you a better chance of protection when you sell products and other parties want to infringe on the usage of that material.

4.You Can Sue For Infringement

If you decide to take an infringer to court, having copyrights and trademarks registered will allow you to sue for infringement.

In order to enforce your rights as the creator, having your music registered with trademarks and copyrights is needed. Having the ability to sue can be beneficial if the infringer has caused a severe amount of damage.

Being able to protect your music and image from infringers is very important because you don’t want to lose out on potential revenue or have your image negatively impacted.

Suing infringers for infringement gives you a stronger ability to enforce your rights to your music, both now and in the future.

Protecting Your Intellectual Property

Sometimes you will face instances of infringement on your music. Having trademarks and copyrights in place will give you the ability to better protect your music from infringement.

There are many benefits to having trademarks and copyrights, and understanding these benefits will help you protect your music you’ve worked hard to create.

The Den Collective partners with our entertainment lawyer resources Wynton Yates, Peter Jay Speroni, and Max Hass to provide sessions and resources on entertainment law. More information on the resources offered can be found here.

Being able to protect your music is an important part of working in the industry. Myself and The Den Collective are here to support and help in any way we can!

 
Entertainment Law, Tips & AdviceEmily KulinowskiEmily Kulinowski, copyright infringement, copyright, trademark, intellectual property, entertainment law, entertainment lawyer, music industryComment