BUS 311 Business Law I Week 5 Final Assignment

With today’s business’s, the products they have available to their customers, there are many laws that help the business protect their product and their self’s.  There are many important laws that will help protect businesses with copyrights and patents.  This includes products that the business has or might be working on.  In this paper I will explain what copyrights and patents are and how they can help a business protect their investments.

So we ask our self what is copyrights?  Copyright “is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U. S. Code) to the authors of “original works of authorship,” including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works” (U.S Copyrights Office, 2008).  In Section 106 of the 1976 Copyright Act allows the owners of the copyright material the right to do and authorize anyone else to reproduce the work in copies, distribute copies or phonorecords, perform the work in publicly or display the work in publicly.  As stated by Bonnice & Liuzzo (2010) “copyright cannot prevent the copying of an idea, but only the way it is expressed.  Under the current copyright law, a created work is protected for the lifetime of the creator plus 70 years.” (p.382).