Patent/Trademarking a Website????

The only way you can patent a web site is if you have used some novel technical/business concept in creating it and filed a very expensive patent application for that method.

You can trademark a phrase used in your business (less expensive), but not a whole web site.

Most people are concerned with copyright protection for their web site, which can cover the whole site's text and images so others cannot legally copy them.

Go to the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office web site for explanations of what each of these terms means: United States Patent and Trademark Office

Marcia Yudkin

A trademark (name and or design) can be registered through the US Patent Office provided someone else in your same industry has not done so.

Go to the US Patent Office website at United States Patent and Trademark Office and noodle around in the search forms to get a feel for the different ways there are to do a search.

My wife is an attorney, but this is not her specialty, so when I wanted to look into acquiring some trademarks she sent me to one of her friends who is a patent/trademark attorney. From this person I learned there are several levels of search that must be performed, then papers requesting a trademark must be submitted, and the process costs between $2,000 to $3,000 depending upon the searches done.

Apparently there are other factors involved too, such as how long you have been using the mark, what kind of business you are in, how similar are other marks to the one your want... the list goes on and gets complicated. This is why patent/trademark attorney earn their keep.

:-Don

If you look up those numbers, you can see what they refer to. So on the bottom Friendster.com it says:
The easiest way to search is through Google : Google Patents

You'll see that the first one listed, US Patent No. 7,069,308 is a patent for "System, method and apparatus for connecting users in an online computer system based on their relationships within social networks"

System, method and apparatus for ... - Google Patent Search

You can do that with the other patent numbers to see what they are for too.

It looks like the patents they list cover the software that runs the site, not the site itself.

You patent inventions, so if your website ran a unique app that you or your team created, you could patent that.

You trademark the name/service mark/logo of a website. I've done it once myself without an attorney and got the trademark. It requires initial paperwork and a fee of over $200, which won't be returned if you are denied the trademark. Go to the patent and trademark website to get a feel more for the process.

If your content is unique on your website it is automatically copyrighted. No need to file anything for that. Same with images, if you use unique images.

I see. lots of helpful info.... actually while were on the topic, i have been to uspto website checking on names and what not. How would it work lets say for example.... company Affliction is obviously trademarked so no one else can use that name for a product or business. well what if someone started a business called affliction Sports? would that be trademark infringment??