What comes first?

[newyork7]

Hi i have an idea for a website, i have not created the website yet, but i was wondering do i get the copyright for the idea first? or do i create the website and then get a copyright for it? Also is there a way to check if your idea is not already taken?

[Chris]

You can't copyright an idea.

And you usually can't copyright a website.

You can copyright graphics, images, and text, but the stupid copyright office doesn't really make it easy to put those together into a website. So you'd take your logo or other graphics, and file a copyright on those, then the text/articles, and file a copyright on those.

If your idea is a process idea, something functional, you'd patent it, not copyright it.

[newyork7]

thanks for the reply , what do you mean by a process idea? would i be able to start a website similar to eBay or would that go against their copyright/patent?

[Chris]

eBay does have patents, as does amazon, on business processes (Amazon has one on one-click checkout for instance).

You can have an auction site, but if you copied ebay too closely you might run afoul of a patent.