What is Copyright and how does it apply to my product?

Generally speaking, Copyright is a legal protection used to offer control of a work or product to the owner of the copyright. This gives the owner of a copyright control over any publications, use, copies, or derivative works of the material.

Copyright applies to almost any and every area of work, but can not be used to replace patent or trademark. In otherwords, copyright just protects a final product, as in a painting, or a poem, but will not protect a technique or method, such as how the painting was created, a business methodology, or a working piece of machinery. These will often fall under patent law.

A few points to remember about copyright and the legal system in the United States is that it is generally speaking the first to create and not the first to file. What that means is if you create the work first, but someone else registers the "copyright" with the United States before you, that someone else's rights are not above yours. You as the creator, as long as you can demonstrate that you created your work before the other artist will be recognized as the copyright holder.

Another point is that the amount of protection given can sometimes be tied to the amount of commercial value a product has. So, although technically speaking an email someone writes would and could be copyrighted, because it has little if any commercial value, the protection given by the courts and the law would be minimal. Similarly, a poem or book written but never published, although it hasn't been published yet, it would definetly be viewed as a potential valuable work, and could be protected vigorously.

Lastly, copyright must be boiled down to an actual piece of work or creation. You cannot copyright an idea in your head of how something will look or what the poem will be, write it down, draw it, create it. Do whatever you have to do to get it out of your head and on to a tangible medium.