Copyright in SL Carla

[CarlaChiari]

Hello,

how I can apply for a copyright in SL on a company logo?

How much?

Thanks for your answear

[Amethyst Jetaime]

You can't.   You must hold the copyright in real life, which you can enforce in SL.

[Rolig Loon]

Copyright is granted by the federal government (or the national government wherever you live), not by SL or Linden Lab.  If you want to apply for copyright in the U.S., all you have to do is fill out a form and submit it with a $35 filing fee.  Learn more at http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-register.html

From your question, however, I suspect that you may mean that you want to register a trademark, not a copyright.  That, again, is a function of the government, not LL or SL.  You can find out about registering a trademark in the U.S. at http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/basics/howtofile.jsp

[Lindal Kidd]

Rolig is correct.  Copyright and trademark registration are done in Real Life.

However, most people who create things in Second Life do not register their creations in this way.  The profits to be made here are so small (in most cases) that the fees charged for official registration are prohibitive.

Before going on, I should clarify something:  In law, the creator of an original work automatically owns the rights to that work.  In other words, you hold a "copy right"...a copyright...to any original content that you create.  The process of registering that copyright with the Copyright Office, or registering your trademark with the Trademark Office, is merely giving the world official recognition of that right that you already posess.  This is useful if it becomes necessary to protect your rights by taking an imitator to court.

Instead of going that expensive and time-consuming route, most Second Life creators rely on the "permissions" system.  This allows the creator to determine what rights she wants to give to the purchaser of her creations.  Usually, that will be either the ability to transfer the item to a third party, or the ability to make copies of the item, but not both.  In addition, the creator can decide whether to let the new owner modify the object.

There are ways in which unscrupulous people can get around these protections.  If they are caught, the creator can make Linden Lab remove illegally copied content by following a notification process mandated by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.