In our previous post, we discussed what a trademark is, how you select one, and how you protect it. In this post, we examine copyright protection. Again, this post concerns a startup business’s intellectual property from a U.S. perspective, and although U.S. law (17 U.S.C. § 101), is different from Icelandic law, this information generally is applicable in Iceland.
And how might copyright protection be relevant for a startup? Here are some scenarios discussing the relevancy of copyright.
Scenario 1. You launched your revolutionary computer software product. All of a sudden a competitor appears that is doing the same thing you are. One of your team members screams, “they cannot do that because we have a copyright”. Is that correct?
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There are many advantages to a customer-centric approach, but here’s the big one: customers are always beautifully, wonderfully dissatisfied, even when they report being happy and business is great. Even when they don’t yet know it, customers want something better, and your desire to delight customers will drive you to invent on their behalf. No customer ever asked Amazon to create the Prime membership program, but it sure turns out they wanted it, and I could give you many such examples.
Another example: market research and customer surveys can become proxies for customers – something that’s especially dangerous when you’re inventing and designing products. “Fifty-five percent of beta testers report being satisfied with this feature. That is up from 47% in the first survey.” That’s hard to interpret and could unintentionally mislead. Good inventors and designers deeply understand their customer. They spend tremendous energy developing that intuition. They study and understand many anecdotes rather than only the averages you’ll find on surveys. They live with the design.
