Trademark Definition

Any word, name, symbol, or device used by a manufacture or merchant to identify his or her goods and distinguish them from goods manufactured or sold by others.
The basic trademark law lies in the tort of "unfair competition", under which a seller using a mark similar to one already in use could be liable for the buyer's likely confusion between two products or services due to all of the seller's efforts considered as a whole.

At common law, trademark infringement was illegal as a form of unfair competition or commercial "fraud". A mark subject to trademark protection may also be protected under "copyright" and "patent" law.

Copyright Definition

The protection of the works of artists and authors giving them the exclusive right to publish their works or determine who may so publish.
Copyrights under the 1976 Act "subsist" in "original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression." For example, as two written work, the copyright is said to extend "only to the arrangement of words.