Creative Law Center
Be the Guardian of Your Creations
Protect your creative work so you can profit from it.
Small businesses, entrepreneurs, and creative professionals like writers, artists, and photographers, can protect creative assets, deter poachers, and enforce their rights.
Getting Started with Copyright Protection
Getting Started with Copyright Protection
A copyright can be your golden ticket. There are unlimited ways to license your rights to create multiple revenue streams if you know what your rights are.
Deciding whether and when to invest time and resources to protect creative work can be a challenge. If you find yourself in any one of these three situations, you need to take action.
Is it Fair Use? Using the Creative Work of Others
Do you need permission to incorporate someone else's work into your own? Or have you transformed their work in a way that makes it fair use?
Getting Started with Trademark Protection
Trademark Registration Costs and Timeline
Trademark registration may not be the first thing you want to spend your money on, but plan for it in your budget. Successful businesses are built on branding.
Trademarks for Creative Professionals
Trademarks help customers find you in the crowd. It's an integral part of your brand, the promise you make to your customers. A good trademark is a powerful business asset. This is how they work.
How To Register a Trademark: Clearance Searches
It takes three steps to register a trademark: file the application; pay the fee; and wait eight to ten months with fingers crossed until the registration certificate arrives in the mail.
Start Building Your Business
Who Owns Copyright? My Company or Me?
As the author of a creative work, you are the one who owns copyright to it unless you are an employee or the work is for hire. If you own the company, you can choose whether to own the rights or assign them to the company. Here's how to make that decision.
Start a Business: Who, What, Where, When, How, and Why
You start a business by making a sale of your finished work or your services. Then you set up your organization. Here's when, why, and how you do that.
Creative Entrepreneur: Running a [Jailhouse] Business
It takes a certain kind of person to be a creative entrepreneur. A successful business is made up of more than just a good idea. Good ideas are key, but they are also a dime a dozen. Solid execution is needed to bring that idea to fruition, to turn that idea into a going concern, to have that idea make money.
Rip-Off Protection Report for Creative Professionals
This free report shows you the basic steps for:
- Protecting your creative work
- Deterring poachers
- Understanding and enforcing your rights