trademarks were registered with the U.S. government. A firm can renew a trademark repeatedly, as long as it

remains in active use.

A copyright, according to the U.S. Copyright Office, “is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United

States for ‘original works of authorship’ including literary, dramatic, musical, architectural, cartographic,

choreographic, pantomimic, pictorial, graphic, sculptural, and audiovisual creations.” No one can reproduce,

display, or perform a copyrighted work without the author's permission. Copyright protection ordinarily lasts

for the life of the author plus 70 years.

Roughly speaking, patent law covers inventions and copyright protects books, songs, and art. However, in

certain areas, like the invention of new software, it has been unclear whether patent or copyright protection

should apply. There is also a body of law known as trade secrets. Even if a company does not have a patent on
{"file_name": "Microeconomics3e.pdf", "source_file": "downloads\\business\\economics\\Microeconomics3e.pdf", "uploaded_via": "batch_uploader", "batch_upload": true, "title": "Principles of Microeconomics 3e", "total_pages": 597, "moddate": "2022-12-07T14:23:05-06:00", "source": "downloads\\business\\economics\\Microeconomics3e.pdf", "producer": "Prince 14.2 (www.princexml.com)", "creator": "PDFMiner", "file_type": ".pdf", "upload_timestamp": "2026-02-07T15:24:38.309401", "creationdate": "2022-12-07T14:15:44-06:00", "file_size_mb": 26.99, "file_hash": "830b81f41611ac67a490444dbb5d6aed292224606965b06965b914443c93331a"}