HOw to patent or copyright an Internet Website Name?

http://www.worldwideocr.com/Copyright_website_design.asp

The best answer to your question @thomasr WAS given to you at Askville.com by PamPerdue

You cannot patent an idea or a website.

You sound like you need an Intellectual Property lawyer. You can generally get an hour of help from a lawyer for not terribly much. Additionally, some law firms run small business workshops that might get you some better help.

The biggest problem, of course, is that it’s capitalism—if I can do what you’re doing better or cheaper, I will put you out of business. I believe it is, in some cases, possible to patent a business practice, but patents are at a minimum around $5k.

You can trademark the name, but that won’t help you much.

Lots more info here: http://uspto.gov/ (If you’re in the US)

Patents are for ideas, and business methods have been patentable for a while now. That being said, to get a patent costs a lot of money to hire a patent attorney and do all sorts of applications.

Then there are the actual statutory requirements for your patent: among the many conditions, novelty and nonobviousness will probably be your biggest hurdles.

Assuming that no one else has ever discussed or put into practice a 99 cent store on the internet, you’d pass the novelty requirement. But then you’d have to hope that the Patent Office agrees that it’s not obvious to combine the “dollar store” concept to the “internet store” concept, and to be honest, that seems pretty unlikely. While I’d totally shop there, I can’t say that this is a brilliant leap of insight.

I agree with @grumpyfish that you’re better off working for a trademark and hoping that anyone who tries to compete with you does it poorly.

Also, I’m not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. I did well in my law school Intellectual Property class, but you need to talk to a real lawyer if you want actual legal advice.

Actually, reading Dominic’s answer, your idea suddenly sounds awfully similar to the IPhone App Store, so you’ll have to differentiate yourself from that pretty well.

Names are not coprightable or patentable. You could have a trademark search done and trademark the name of your brand (Web site).

This may seem obvious, but the easiest way to lay claim to an internet related venture is to get the associated domain name(s).

So if your business is 99Cent Store-O-Matic… you may want to grab 99centstore-o-matic.com… which I believe is available (that name is pretty awesome)

Of course this does nothing to lock up your business idea, but really, the only way to do that successfully is to execute better or fill a niche. Not everything has to be the next Amazon to be successful. Go for it and at worst you’re going to learn a ton and get great experience in how a business is run.

Good luck with your business.

are those headbands in your photo going to be for sale? Sign me up now for two.

@thomasr As someone who was once very protective of ideas (I actually filed a provisional patent for Fluther way back when), my best advice is: don’t bother.

In the Internet world especially, ideas are a time a dozen. The problem is not coming up with them, let alone having people steal them—it’s just the opposite: the challenge is how to spread your ideas. It’s all about execution and dedication. All that money and time you could spend protecting your idea would be much better spent working on your product.

Go ahead and blog about your idea. Yell it from the mountaintops. Remember, to steal your idea someone would have to be: smart, motivated, have a couple years of free time, be convinced they can do it better than you, and finally think it’s better than the hundreds of other ideas they no doubt have. It just almost never happens. Plus, if it really is a good idea, there are probably at least five other people already working on it anyway (don’t be disappointed when you learn this)—that’s actually a good sign.

I’m amazed how in the web world now everyone just openly talks about the big projects they plan to work on, even in the earliest stages. No one has the time or inclination to steal these ideas. If anything, they’re likely to provide help or connections down the road.

So just go ahead and register your domain and get to work. :) And good luck!

I know I didn’t exactly answer your question, but I thought it’d be useful advice given I’ve been in your shoes.