Copyright protection gives the owner of a copyright the right to reproduce a work, prepare derivative works based thereon, distribute the copyrighted work, perform any copyrighted work publicly, and display the copyrighted work publicly. As set forth above, copyright protects works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium. However, copyright protection does not extend to all intellectual property. Rather, your intellectual property may more properly be protected through trademark or patent law. Trademarks identify the source or origin of goods or services and protect the goodwill associated therewith.
Patents protect inventions.
The Copyright Act defines publication as the distribution of copies or phonorecords of a work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership or by rental, lease or lending. The offering to distribute copies or phonorecords to a group of persons for purposes of further distribution, public performance, or public display constitutes publication. A public performance or display of a work does not of itself constitute publication. Before the Copyright Act was amended in 1978, copyright was general secured by the act of publishing a work with notice of the copyright. Since the notice requirement is no longer mandatory, publication is no longer as significant in copyright law, but publication is still relevant in a few respects, such as effecting the deposit requirement for registration and effecting the date that copyright duration is calculated.