Differences Between Copyrights and Patents: A Simple Guide

As a follow up to my post on why software is protected by copyright (rather than patents), here I examine the differences between patents and copyright.

This has been adapted from responses I gave on Yahoo! Answers.

What they protect:

• Copyright protects original 'literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works'.
• Patents protect inventions (methods/processes or products/composition of matter, or machines).

Requirements for protection:

• Your work can be copyrighted as long as it is original.
• In order for an invention to be patented, the inventor must prove that the invention is novel, inventive and useful. Jurisprudence (i.e. previous court decisions) define these requirements. The patent office determines whether an application meets these criteria.

How you get protection:

• Copyright protection is automatic upon creation, although registration may be recommended to prove originality to either defend against or pursue an infringement claim. For registration offices around the world, click here.
• Patents require registration through a patent application, which goes through a costly, lengthy and laborious patent examination, during which the patent application is published.

Duration of copyright protection:

• Copyright protection is for the lifetime of the author and an additional 50 or 70 years (depending on the country) after the author's death. Also see here.
• Patent duration is shorter than copyrights (around 20 years, depending on the country and other factors).

What acts constitute infringement:

• Copyright prevents others from reproducing, adapting, distributing, publicly displaying or performing a copyrighted work without permission or license from the copyright owner.
• Patents prevent others from using, manufacturing, selling or importing the method or product without a license from the patent owner.

Where your work is protected:

• Copyrights are protected in most countries of the world. For a listing of countries that are party to the Berne Convention, see here.
• Patents are jurisdictional; your invention is protected only in the countries where you have a patent in effect. It is costly to patent in many countries. While the Patent Cooperation Treaty and the European Patent Office somewhat simplify protection your invention in multiple countries, the cost and time involved are still considerable.

Other links:
US Copyright Office FAQs
US Patent and Trademark Office

Can I use images from the internet for free?

This has been adapted from my responses on Yahoo! Answers:


Question: Are images that appear on Google or Yahoo in the public domain? Can I use them on my website as long as I say where they came from?



For links to free images, click here.


Answer: In general, images on the internet are NOT in the public domain and are therefore protected by copyright. If they are licensed under the Creative Commons, you will be able to use them more freely, but you still need to comply with the Creative Commons (CC) license terms, such as attribution for CC-BY, non-commercial use for CC-BY-NC, etc.)


Copyright protects the owner from unlicensed (without permission) public display of the protected work. Attribution (citing the source) is not a defense against copyright infringement.


There are many images online that are available for re-use at no charge (links below), but these come with conditions which may include, among others:
1) You must include attribution or a link to the photographer's website;
2) You may not use images in commercial works, i.e. works you are selling or earning money from; and
3) You may not provide the images to others, i.e. they must obtain the images from the website of origin.


To search for images that you can use for free for non-commercial use, see below: 
(please comply with their conditions for free use)

• Public Domain Sherpa
• Free Digital Photos
• Free Images
• Images Philippines
• Directory of Creative Commons Images

Why is Software Protected by Copyright (and generally not by patents)?

This post is based on an answer I gave on Yahoo! Answers. The question has been rewritten and the answer has been modified from the original.

This question rightfully deserves a thesis or academic paper. This post merely describes practical reasons for the preferred automatic form of protection for software. It does not explore the reasons for patentability (or non-patentability) of software.

Software is inherently a creation based on language, and for this reason, copyright is appropriate to protect programs as a species of 'literary work'.

Generally, patents protect  products, methods, processes, compositions of matter, and improvements of the foregoing (definitions vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction), that fulfill the requirements of patentability (novel, inventive and useful.

Since software in fact involve processes (i.e. they have functions based on algorithms), it seems that they can be covered by patents. The question of whether software should be patented has seen many debates and discussions, but there have been some 'software patents' in the US.

It is interesting to think of the reason why software is primarily protected by copyright rather than patent as being rooted in practicality, rather than the technical or legal definitions of copyrightable and patentable work.

The historical basis for software being protected primarily by copyright is very excellently described in a paper by Scott L. Garren. There the author pointed out that although patents were recognized to be a form of protection for computer programs, the difficulties in acquiring patents and their disadvantages to copyright made them less attractive to programmers. These reasons are explained below.

Although patent protection is long enough (17 or 20 years or so, depending on country and year of patent application), copyright protection is longer (lifetime of the author plus 50 or 70 years, depending on country and year of publication). Nowadays we realize that software is upgraded/improved so quickly that such a long term of protection is unnecessary.

Patents also provide stronger protection; any use (in any media) of the same method is considered infringement. Copyright only protects, well, in its very essence, copying. Software would then be better protected by a patent. But generally, software developers do not seek patent protection in addition to the automatic copyright protection they enjoy.

There are other disadvantages to patents, making it the less desired protection for software.Patent applications require complete disclosure of the invention; prior to copyright protection, software were considered trade secrets. Even now, unless they are open source or their source code is disclosed, programs can be kept confidential, yet still enjoy copyright protection.

Patents are only granted to inventions that demonstrate novelty and inventiveness. On the other hand, copyright only requires originality.

Preparing a patent application is a highly laborious and technical process, requiring the engagement of an experienced and qualified patent attorney, followed by years of examination by the patent office. Before the patent is granted, the software would likely have become obsolete. Copyright used to require mere registration; today registration is not even necessary and works are protected by copyright from the moment of their creation.

Patents are valid only in the country where the patent exists. Getting a patent in multiple countries takes years and a lot of money. Copyright, due to the numerous treaties on the matter, are effectively worldwide at no or minimal cost to obtain. This is certainly more appropriate for the digital age.

So in summary,  one reason copyright protects software is because programs are 'literary works' in that they are based on a 'language'. However, there are many more practical reasons why copyright is preferred to patents in protecting software.