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Patents and Trademarks

This subject guide provides a starting point for research in patents and trademarks at the Patent and Trademark Resource Center at the AAEL at University of Michigan . Please schedule appointment with the library contact on the left panel.

Copyright

Briefly, a copyright protects the work of creators of literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works. Copyright applies to the form of the expression, not the substance, so the written instructions for a computer (i.e., the lines of progam code) are copyrightable, but what the instructions do is not.

Copyright is clearly more complicated than this, though. For a better understanding, you may wish to consult some of the following copyright information on the WWW: