© = Registered Trademark
™ = Trademark
© = Copywrite
What exactly is the difference?
Not all trademarks are registered. You can get common law trademark status without registration by just using the mark all the time and then suing the hell out of anyone who tries to infringe upon.
Also some people can’t or don’t want to type the R in a circle.
And it’s copyright, not copywrite. It gives the owner the right to make copies.
If it’s a sound recording, it’s a P inside a circle.
I am one of the people too lazy to figure out the code to type the symbols.
OF course I meant
® = Registered Trademark.
BobT is correct. Copyright and Trademark can be self-applied, but the “circle-R” means that the trademark has been registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office after an exhaustive search of existing marks, making defense of the trademark much easier.
I believe that there may be a registration process for copyright as well, but it’s not in my area so I’ll withhold comment.
You can indeed register your copyright. All you have to do is fill out a form and send a copy of whatever it is you want registered to Copyright Office in Washington and you have yourself a registered copyright.
Registration gives you certain legal advantages if push comes to shove, in particular, you can claim punitive damages if someone infringes. If you don’t register, you just get actual damages, which usually don’t amount to much.
An earlier thread on this subject:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=9529
For those scoring at home…
The key combos (you must type the zero & you must use the numeric keypad):
ALT+0169 = ©
ALT+0174 = ®
ALT+0153 = ™
Only in the US - and its not compulsory, and in Taiwan, which I understand is phasing it out. Maybe there are some other countries, but I’ve never heard of them. Most places in the world you can’t actually register copyright.
You should be aware that these are not universal standards. I’m seeing those two characters as the AE ligature and o with a circumflex accent over it. But then, I left my browser in Japanese mode. These characters aren’t universal in every browser localization, and you really shouldn’t use them as alt codes, use the official HTML versions.
The U.S. is one of the few countries that has registration of copyright. However, you don’t need to be registered to have some (limited) copyright protection.
Chas.E, FYI HTML can’t be used in SDMB any more.
Isn’t it about time we all enabled Unicode? Working a lot with foreign languages, I am damned sick and tired of carefully coding special characters and having them turn into garbage because somebody else’s system interprets them differently.
I know, I meant generally speaking, you should use the proper codes wherever possible.