Hello I want to know what is the exact process and how much will it cost to copyright all my web work( websites,ideas,articles,etc)? I want to know about trademarking a website? what the process of that too and will it worth something like that?
All the information is available here, the US Copyright Office, www.copyright.gov FAQ, www.copyright.gov/help/faq Fees, www.copyright.gov/docs/fees.html Basics, www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html Is copyright your work worth? Get the answer yourself after learning more on the process and determine what of your work can be copyrighted and which cannot.
Copyrighting is a really extensive process, took me over a year to copyright a picture I took of the Grand Canyon. Didn't stop anyone though...
Disclaimer: IANAL Copyright is automatic. (At least for now ... but that's another story.) As soon as you create something, it's yours. Registering copyright gives you an additional level of proof, and there are statutory damages if someone violates your copyright after you've registered it. However, even if you register your copyright, it's not going to stop anyone from stealing your work. Generally speaking, for internet work, sufficient proof of ownership can be obtained from witnesses (friends, business associates, customers), archive.org, and your own word to take out anyone who steals your work. Most of the time, when someone takes one of my articles, all I have to do is contact the ISP with an informal e-mail, "Hey! You have a thief among your customers!" and the content (and often the thief's site itself) goes poof. So really, the only benefit is statutory damages. And even if you're granted statutory damages, you still have to collect. What are you going to do if the thief lives in another country, or has an anonymous account and the ISP won't identify them without a court order? By the time you pay for a lawyer, and turn it over to a collection agency, and spend tons of your own time pursuing the matter, it's probably not worth it. Particularly since there's some time and effort involved in registering the work to start with. My own choice is to display a copyright notice on all pages on my site. And then send polite requests to ISPs as needed to get rid of infringing sites. This generally works. If it doesn't, there are other tactics to try: complain to Adsense or other advertisers, DMCAs to the search engines, and a formal DMCA notice to the ISP generally solves the problem. No copyright registration needed.