IP protection is important when your artistic work or creative procedure is personal and one-of-a-kind, and you want to protect yourself from the possibility of copycats. It also comes in handy when you are seeking to monetize, license, and promote your work with the public through e-commerce or retail.

Types of Intellectual Property Protection

The three major types of protections within IP Law are patents, trademarks, and copyrights.

Patents grant their owners an exclusive right, for up to twenty years, over the invention described in the issued patent claim. A key aspect that distinguishes patents from other forms of IP protection is that a set of patent claims must enable a consumer of ordinary skill to reverse-engineer and utilize the invention. There are three types of patents: utility, design, and plant. Asking a patent attorney what patent you should file for is your best bet when it comes to saving money in the long run.

A trademark is a word, name, logo, symbol, device, or any combination thereof, that can be used as a method of identification for goods or services. Trademarks allow prospective customers to consider the reputation of a seller of goods or a provider of services.

A copyright protects artistic works such as literature, music, films, software, etc. Copyright protection provides the owner of the work with exclusive right to reproduce and distribute copies, prepare derivative works, as well as perform or display the work publicly. Copyright authors do not need to register their work in order to obtain the initial copyright, as they develop right away under common law, but they must be federally registered in order to be enforced.

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Patents

The first method of legal protection that an artist should utilize to protect his or her work is the design patent. Design patents protect the way an invention looks, while more common utility patents protect the functionality of an invention. The next question an artist might ask would be how to get a patent?

JD Houvener, a Washington DC patent attorney, says that “an inventor would seek a design patent when they have a protectable design which consists of the visual ornamental characteristics embodied in, or applied to, an article of manufacture.” In order for a design patent application to be eligible by the US Patent and Trademark Office standards, the USPTO must find that the proposed design is novel, new, and non-obvious when compared to similar prior existing product designs.

Design patents are beneficial for artists who are seeking to halt the creation of knockoffs, prevent importation of infringing products, gain credibility as a reputable artist, and market their designs.

Copyright

Copyright law allows artists to come forward with their creations for the betterment of society, an age-old practice that increases cultural participation and overall enjoyment of life. Without copyright law, artists wouldn’t be able to fairly and fully monetize their talents or make a living off of their passion.

Contemporary artists can copyright their brushstrokes, their built textures, their personal logos, or really anything that is indicative of a unique style. Artists should seek copyright registration over a particular type of look or composition or subject matter that you would like the public to identify as uniquely yours, especially if your designs are popular among collectors.

The artists who have to be most concerned about copyright infringement are those whose artistic designs have a mass or commercial appeal. They are at higher risk of their work being replicated or utilized without permission.

Trademark

Trademark law applies to show people where things come from. Trademarks can be utilized when you are trying to build up your brand, whether you are selling your art in person or online. If you have a logo that you want consumers to recognize or you have a line of art that you’d like consumers to recognize as under your brand, consider registering for federal trademark protection.

Trademarks don’t require federal registration unless you are seeking to enforce. Rather, trademarks are protected under the common law right away. As soon as you fix an expression in a tangible mean, no one else can copyright without your permission. Thus, registration is not absolutely necessary if you are only seeking to sell to family and friends on a small scale, or at fairs or showcases.

However, if you want to sell and publicize in the realm of interstate sale, which applies to those who sell their art on e-commerce platforms such as Etsy, you have to register your trademark if you plan to seek enforcement. This is important when you’re looking to sell outside your local geographic scope.

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A VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a computer network for connecting computers into a single virtual network. A network is called a virtual network because it provides an imaginary direct connection to any other computer or Web site.

Computers can be in physically independent networks in different places, and they can communicate with each other via a virtual private network as if they were on the same network segment.

Via VPN, it is possible to ensure, for example, the connection of company computers anywhere on the Internet to the company intranet (internal company network).

How Does It Work

Simply put, a VPN works by replacing a user’s IP address with another, usually a foreign, address when connected to the Internet. In practice, the user can sit at home, but according to the IP address, he will be located in, say, San Francisco and will be able to watch Netflix with a selection of films for the USA region.

Of course, VPNs can now also be used by ordinary users and households, where it is used to protect the identity of private communications and the ability to access content or sites that are not available. Recently, the popularity of VPNs as protection against hackers when using public Wi-Fi networks has been growing.

Such a service is offered by many companies, but fees must be taken into account. Then better security, higher transmission speed, and especially a larger data package available to the customer are guaranteed.

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They are used for data protection due to their ability to mask computer IP addresses. Individuals also use them for a variety of applications. They help access geo-blocked content and lovers of limited edition sneakers, primarily use them to build sneaker bots. 

A proxy server or application-level gateway is a server that acts as an intermediary between your computer network and the internet. Their technology is used to enhance business data security and increase the performance of computer networks. Companies also utilize proxies to manage and monitor the use of their online resources. 

By intercepting connections between your computer and the internet, a proxy directs all outgoing and incoming online data through its server, masking your IP address. Any hacker, tracker, or monitor trying to access your business’s data or online activity will not identify your digital footsteps or destination.

They will only view the proxy server’s data and IP address instead. They also speed up your website pages by caching user requests from external URLs. If your business requires proxies, you might find the difference between the data center and residential proxies a tad confusing.

Types of proxies

Residential proxies

Internet service providers sell residential proxies. And unlike data center IPs, they are valid IP addresses. They are wired to a computer network and will give you online anonymity, minimizing the risk of blacklisting by vigilant web protocols.

Residential proxies are harder to access and come at a cost. Data center proxies on the other hand are cloud-based and are not valid IP addresses. A basic investigation will reveal that they are number-based and are therefore easily detected and banned by websites.

Data center proxies are easy to access and are the most popular of both proxies. They are low cost and even sometimes free.

Pros of residential proxies

• They give online anonymity, and since they are legitimate IP addresses, they are less susceptible to blacklisting than other types of proxies.
• Residential proxies offer better security because they are sold by legal entities that could face legal consequences should they perform malicious actions with your private data.
• Their proxy servers are better maintained to ensure that there are minimal connection errors, blocks, or timeouts.
• They are perfect for enabling access to geo-targeted deals allowing you to log into any website in any location in the world. You can, therefore, access deals that are exclusive to specific geographical areas such us travel site deals or early sneaker releases.
• Residential proxies are perfect for web scraping if your business is looking for marketing data. Rotating residential IPs will get you through most IP flagging software, enabling smooth web crawling or scraping.

Cons of residential proxies

• Residential proxies can be expensive, especially if they are required in bulk for purposes such as web scraping.
• The cache memory of a proxy is configured to store information. If you use a residential proxy from an untrustworthy ISP, you could risk data loss and hacking.

Pros of data center proxies

• Proxy from data centers is more affordable than residential proxies are.
• If you need bulk proxies for activities such as web scraping you will find it easier and cheaper to access them.
• They provide adequate anonymity when online enabling activities such as access to geo-blocked content and data protection
• They are faster than some residential proxies making it much easier to connect to data

Cons of data center proxies

• Data center proxies are not linked to any ISP and are therefore easy to detect online. They will be quickly flagged or blocked if websites find out that a proxy is sending numerous queries from an irrelevant geolocation or web browser.
• Open data center proxies can easily lead to hacking and malware infestation.

Which proxies are best for businesses?

Now that you know the difference between data center and residential proxies, which one should you use for your business needs? Data center proxies are the most popular for regular online activities. Residential proxies are safer because they require authentication, unlike data center proxies.
They are maintained by companies and will provide safer connections for businesses that handle sensitive data or personal client information. There are high-quality data center proxies that come at a small cost. These are perfect for businesses as long as they are not shared or open.
Public proxies may be free, but they have many disadvantages and high risks as well. Since they are open for use, they tend to get misused. You will most often find an open proxy blacklisted because it has been used to slam WebPages with many dubious requests.
Open or public proxies can also be notoriously slow and of low quality. They impose severe dangers for business networks because they are often laden with malware that could infect your computers. If you have to use data center proxies, choose between shared proxies and dedicated proxies. Shared proxies are much cheaper while dedicated proxies are used for high-performance activities.

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