There are many legal things to be aware of when starting and Marketing a business. Of course there are the legal things such as forms and taxes to consider, but there’s also intellectual property to consider as well. When you’re starting your business and are coming up a with a name, you want to file papers to protect it as your intellectual property, right? Of course you do. But you also need to be careful that the name you chose for your brand isn’t already taken or that it doesn’t infringe on someone else’s intellectual property in some other way. Otherwise, you could be sued for trademark infringement.
The same goes for copyrights. Copyrights are issued to protect a person’s Creative works, such as those by authors, musicians, and artists, and notice of Copyright should always be put on every copy of creative work to ensure protection.
Marketing a business involves a lot of creativity, from developing written content to images and videos to be used for marketing. It’s important to keep in mind that it’s best to come up with your own content. Not only is copying content from the Internet, either written or image, considered bad practice that can earn you bad rankings and make people look at you unfavourably, but it can also land you in legal hot water for copyright infringement and cost you a pretty penny for using that piece of content illegally.
When it comes to using images from the Internet, remember to NOT crop an image to cut off the copyright information, because the image will still be identifiable. Do NOT alter any image with copyright and try to pass it off as your own. Be aware that many photo libraries, like Getty images, have software that can find and identify illegally used images. If you can’t get the rights to use a copyrighted image, then you must either come up with your own image or search for images licensed for commercial use under Creative Commons. You can use Pixabay or just do an image search for Creative Commons. Just be aware that there is the possibility that some Creative Commons images may actually not be licensed by the original copyright owner.
Be sure that if you use someone else’s creative work, make sure you credit the source. This applies to both written content and images. Also, if it’s an image, be sure to include the copyright status in the caption. Even if an image is creative commons, it may still have some rights reserved, after all. Be sure to keep the URL of the image on file so you know where you got it from. If an image has a person in it, don’t use it if you can’t find out if the model signed a release or not. And don’t use an image that you can’t find a copyright status for (it may be cropped or altered by someone).
When it comes to social media and marketing, there are rules to follow in regards to copyright as well. For example, is your use of the content? Make sure what you are using is something you own or that you have permission to use it before you publish it. Be sure you understand and abide by the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act).
For your own protection of any creative works you come up with, it’s best to get a federal copyright registration for it. Technically, you don’t need to register your work to own its copyright, but federally registering it will give you more legal protection.
There’s much to consider when it comes to marketing your business and copyrights. For more information, you can go here, here,
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