I am wondering if it is possible to sell business idea + research around it, or there is no chance, unless i offer a "full package"..
In the beginning of 2005 I run into the problem that some of my work was stolen. I did not have any legal proof that stolen designs belong to me, because my powerbook's hard drive decided to commit suicide a month earlier, so I lost all originals. I also did not have a U.S. Copyright Registration. Being a graphic designer and developer, I cannot afford obtaining copyrights for all my work because it requires a lot of paper work and costs too much.
While learning about copyrights I found that when there is a dispute about some graphic element or visual artwork, a good proof of ownership would be a notary dated and signed package. Since becoming a public notary is really easy (1 day course with same day certification, $100), i decided that it would be a good idea for business - to provide people with possibility to submit their artwork, which i will be able to certify legally.
I started developing this idea step-by-step, researching about copyright laws, applicable market, possibilities for expansion etc etc. At the moment I have a the whole business plan, which I already started to make into reality, but then had to put on hold due serious financial problems caused by failure of one project I participated for almost 1 year.
When I was choosing a domain name for this project, I was really lucky that I got a chance to purchase 2 domain names, which are just PERFECT (disregarding the length).
CopyrightCertificate.com and CopyrightDeclaration.com
The reason these domains are perfect is because of possibility of registering an official ServiceMark (SM) and Trademark (TM).
It is possible because "Copyright Certificate" or "Copyright Declaration" are NOT legal terms.
"Copyright Registration" and "Copyright Agreement" are ...
Try searching Official U.S. Trademark Office site
and you won't find anything. At the same time searching Google for Copyright Certificate returns 65,400,000 results, and Copyright Declaration returns 24,100,000 results.
I also concluded a research using U.S. Trademark Databases about availability of SM and TM and both of them are available.
Since trademark rights are gained by actual use of a mark rather than by registration, I created a prototype of the future CopyrightCertificate.com site and provided copyright protection to my clients (generally the first party who uses a mark in commerce has the right to use the mark)
You can see examples at HostingCompared.com (at the bottom).
The whole workflow of providing Official Copyright Certificate (after obtaining SM or TM, it will be 100% official because the fact of submission/existence of artwork will be certified by Public Notary:
* User signs up for the service and receives the one-time submission of his files archived, plus 1-2 screen shots;
* After paying a basic fee he receives an HTML code, which will be posted to his site, so all pages of his site will be displaying his certificate (it is really good from SEO point, because only serious people will be applying for Copyright Certificate, and most of their sites have high PR, which will work for us really well).
There are many optional services. which could be offered to users. Some of them are listed on current site.
So what do you think?
In the beginning of 2005 I run into the problem that some of my work was stolen. I did not have any legal proof that stolen designs belong to me, because my powerbook's hard drive decided to commit suicide a month earlier, so I lost all originals. I also did not have a U.S. Copyright Registration. Being a graphic designer and developer, I cannot afford obtaining copyrights for all my work because it requires a lot of paper work and costs too much.
While learning about copyrights I found that when there is a dispute about some graphic element or visual artwork, a good proof of ownership would be a notary dated and signed package. Since becoming a public notary is really easy (1 day course with same day certification, $100), i decided that it would be a good idea for business - to provide people with possibility to submit their artwork, which i will be able to certify legally.
I started developing this idea step-by-step, researching about copyright laws, applicable market, possibilities for expansion etc etc. At the moment I have a the whole business plan, which I already started to make into reality, but then had to put on hold due serious financial problems caused by failure of one project I participated for almost 1 year.
When I was choosing a domain name for this project, I was really lucky that I got a chance to purchase 2 domain names, which are just PERFECT (disregarding the length).
CopyrightCertificate.com and CopyrightDeclaration.com
The reason these domains are perfect is because of possibility of registering an official ServiceMark (SM) and Trademark (TM).
It is possible because "Copyright Certificate" or "Copyright Declaration" are NOT legal terms.
"Copyright Registration" and "Copyright Agreement" are ...
Try searching Official U.S. Trademark Office site
and you won't find anything. At the same time searching Google for Copyright Certificate returns 65,400,000 results, and Copyright Declaration returns 24,100,000 results.
I also concluded a research using U.S. Trademark Databases about availability of SM and TM and both of them are available.
Since trademark rights are gained by actual use of a mark rather than by registration, I created a prototype of the future CopyrightCertificate.com site and provided copyright protection to my clients (generally the first party who uses a mark in commerce has the right to use the mark)
You can see examples at HostingCompared.com (at the bottom).
The whole workflow of providing Official Copyright Certificate (after obtaining SM or TM, it will be 100% official because the fact of submission/existence of artwork will be certified by Public Notary:
* User signs up for the service and receives the one-time submission of his files archived, plus 1-2 screen shots;
* After paying a basic fee he receives an HTML code, which will be posted to his site, so all pages of his site will be displaying his certificate (it is really good from SEO point, because only serious people will be applying for Copyright Certificate, and most of their sites have high PR, which will work for us really well).
There are many optional services. which could be offered to users. Some of them are listed on current site.
So what do you think?
