Trademark and Copyright fall under the area of the law known as intellectual property. A trademark is a word, name, symbol or device which is used in trade with goods to indicate the source of the goods and to distinguish them from the goods of others. A servicemark is the same as a trademark except that it identifies and distinguishes the source of a service rather than a product. It is important to protect your trademark or servicemark as they can sometimes be the most valuable asset of a business. Trademarks and servicemarks represent the time, effort and expense invested in building a company's reputation and good will. Failure to protect the mark could result in a loss of that investment. A Copyright is a form of protection provided to the authors of “original works of authorship” including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works, both published and unpublished. The 1976 Copyright Act generally gives the owner of copyright the exclusive right to reproduce the copyrighted work, to prepare derivative works, to distribute copies or recordings of the copyrighted work, to perform the copyrighted work publicly, or to display the copyrighted work publicly. It is illegal for anyone to violate the protections provided to the copyright holder and an author should take all steps necessary to protect those rights.