CopyrightCertificate.com + CopyrightDeclaration.com + Prototype + Business Plan/idea

Concept: to provide a secure file depository with certification from "legal witness" (public notary).

Purpose: This will be a complementary services to U.S. Copyright registration, which will satisfy (I think) most of people's needs for securing their authorship. This service will be less restrictive/faster/cheaper, than official copyright registration. Anyone who will pay a reasonable fee of $10-15, will receive a "copyright certificate", which could be posted on his/her website or included with a "product" (a song, postcard, design etc). In case when someone attempts to "steal" author's work and author decides to take legal actions against that person, it will be up to court to determine who is the "real" author. From our part we will provide a legal proof that someone who identified himself as "author" submitted to us this file on certain date. In my opinion this proof will be crucial in resolving this matter, because most likely the one who will be accused of stealing this artwork won’t have any proof.

While developing this concept I discovered this thing, that if you google the term "copyright certificate" , it will return 109,000,000 results while searching through government sites return nothing. I realized that there is no legal term such as 'copyright certificate'(a) or "copyright declaration"(b). The legal term used by officials is 'copyright registration'.

This fact allows obtaining a TM or SM, because the service I described above totally qualifies for it. I also researched U.S. Trademark Database for trademark's availability and found that both terms' ((a) and (b)) service marks and and trademarks are available.

Obtaining TM for this service will allow providing "Official Copyright Certificate" or "Official Copyright Declaration" services (notary certified and protected by ‘trademarked’ service).

Since trademark rights are gained by actual use of a mark, rather than by registration, I created a web "prototype" of future functionality and 'certified' half-dozen sites. This prototype could be seen at CopyrightCertificate.com ,

You can see examples at hostingcompared.com or danielphoto.com (at the bottom, click on on certificate to see in full-size).

There are many optional services, that could be offered to customers - from domain registration, security certificates to hosting etc.. Some of the options are listed on prototype site.

In my original plans both domains (CopyrightCertificate.com , CopyrightDeclaration.com) , will be providing identical services: the only difference that one will be a paid service (advertising free), and another one will give away 'free certificate' with a little 'extra', like ‘embedded’ google's adsense. I estimated that certification of one submission/account will cost around me around $0.003, while one click on adword's ad brings minimum $0.05 .
I think that both sites have a chance to become popular pretty fast, because ‘certified’ sites will be linking back to us for certificate/declaration verification.

This business doesn't require any major investment to be run: it won't need any dedicated servers and could be run from shared hosting

Recurring expenses:
- Hosting $120 per year | 5GB of space (more than enough, since all submitted files will be downloaded once a week to - DVD , certified and archived.)
- SSL Certificate: $45 per year

One time expenses:
- DVD burner + blank dvd: $40;
- Public Notary license: $100 / 1 day course;

This is an absolute minimum: administrator will be using current site and paypal to process payments.

Optional :
$2300-2700 will cover the development of fully 'automatic' solution, which will generate certificates automatically, (after processing the payment through cc gateway)

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Offering for sale:

- Choice of Domain names (choose any 1):
--- CopyrightCertificate.com #2 in google for "Copyright certificate" (out of 109,000,000 results)
--- CopyrightDeclaration.com #2 in google for "Copyright Declaration" (out of 30,100,000 results)
- Current web prototype of future site's functionality
- Full corporate identity package (logo, business cards, letterheads etc)
- Work flow (functionality) charts created using MindJet's MindMaps;
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The reason to sell: need funds for other projects.

$6K B.O.

 

um.. this just seems so illegal.

 

why? there is NOTHING illegal.
How it could be useful:

to prove that "something" was submitted on "specific date"..
If someone stole your artwork, you take them to court, right?
I will show up as witness and confirm that someone had submitted this file..
then it's up to court to decide.

 

Well i was a little harsh by saying illegal, what i really meant was i doubt anyone in the copyright protection business the legit united states one would give this any weight they would just say if you wanted to protect something why didnt you just do it here http://www.copyright.gov/ example a person who would copyright something goes to your service and uses it and thinks there safe, in the mean time some one used the above website the us copyright place and copyrighted the same thing which one you think will get it. id say the one who used the official site because if something is that important to copyright you better do it using the official place rather some place you dont know and might decide to steal your idea and copyright it themselves lol.

 

and by the way i wouldnt use this term on your website "Official Copyright Records Depository"