Is copyright better than registered trademarks?

The Da Vinci Code case - copyright weaknesses

Dan Brown, the author of the widely read book (over 30 million copies reputedly sold), the Da Vinci Code, was represented in the High Court in London in 2006 to defend an accusation that his book breached copyrights held by other writers, and used material from their work in the book. In 1982, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh had their book called "The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail" published by Random House, which also published the Da Vinci Code. The accusation was that the Da Vinci Code took certain themes from The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, and that this represented breach of copyright (Baigent & Leigh v The Random House Group Ltd., [2006] EWHC 719 (Ch), judge Peter Smith). The accusers lost their case.

Is copyright strong enough protection?

Copyright versus registered trademarks
- copyright does not protect some aspects of intellectual property

Based on the Da Vinci Code court judgement, copyright is not appropriate for protecting ideas, facts or themes. The rights of authors to write about historical events was preserved by the judgement.

The religious theme about the lineage of Christ was not protected as it was contained in the book, and was a valid theme for other authors to write about.

This makes copyright somewhat less valuable as a form of protection for intellectual property. Traditionally new ideas are protected through patents, although certain matters are not patentable - for example recipes, or ideas that already exist or ideas that form part of the state of the art. This leads to the role of trademarks in maintaining rights in intellectual property.

So protection of your work may be more difficult to obtain than might appear at first, especially via copyright.

So it may be very worthwhile looking at using trademark registration as a suitable additional tool for protection of your rights. Registered trademarks have been very successful in protecting property rights. Use registered trademarks that can be embodied into the following:

• concepts, such as cartoon characters.
• brand names, such as a name for a drink or product.
• titles, such as a book or film title.
• character film rights and merchandising.
• themes, such as a devised theme, like 007.
• themes or ideas such as restaurant chains.
• concepts, such as contained in beauty products.

Applying to register a trademark can carry significant rights, once registration has been obtained.

The registered trademark allows for several ways to exploit concepts, brand names, titles, film characters and themes. The result of the Da Vinci Code legal case should make authors, publishers, film producers and media businesses look at the power of trademark registration to secure strong rights.

In certain cases, it would now appear that the case for registering a trademark has been strengthened by the decision in the Da Vinci Code case.

To see more about registering trademarks for films, television programmes or cartoon characters, go to the character merchandising and trademarks page.

To see a full range of our trademark registration services, or how to register a trademark, please visit the trademarks SITE MAP page.