I made an exploratory trip up to Sonoma County to check out another possibility for the setting of Anasazi’s Road. Overall it was a success and very enjoyable. The first stop, of course, was the county superior court in Santa Rosa. It was something of a disappointment, as unlike some elegant old courthouses across northern California, this was a brooding modernist sprawl of concrete and slot windows. I did like the accent notes provided by the sections of glass brick, though. Ah well.

The drive to Sebastopol, then through Freestone, Occidental, Camp Meeker and Monte Rio, to Guerneville was very pretty and just the sort of environment I had in mind. I had never really internalized that the county has a rough east-west dichotomy—the western part heavily forested and the eastern part more open, where most of the vinyards are.

Guerneville itself is as close to perfect as I reasonably could expect to find. It's a bit small, lacking the larger, more rambling buildings I was hoping to find, but that's a minor matter. It is not exactly pretty or elegant, but it has a certain shabby charm, sort of like a comfortable old pair of jeans, well-worn and well-loved.

Just as a side note,  baroncoon, who rode along, and I had to stop at the Ace in the Hole cider brewery and pub. Best hard ciders ever, and good food too. It's on California 116 near Graton, between Forestville and Sebastopol. Baron joked that Ana would insist on driving if Tom suggested going there, and would tell Tom in no uncertain terms that if he puked in her truck after drinking all that cider she would put him in the truck-bed.

Every artist is familiar with copyright, the legal protection of one’s work against illegitimate use by others for profit.

Most artists, though, are less familiar with trademark. What is the difference and why is it important?

A work of art, of whatever sort, is copyrighted. It is a physical object with an independent existence in the real world, even if it is an electronic file. It is the expression of an idea.

A proper copyright notice, incidentally, must include either the word “copyright”, spelled out, or the “©” symbol. Other variations, such as a C in parentheses, don’t count.

Generally speaking, at least in Western countries, a work is considered protected by copyright even if it is not registered through whatever legal mechanism exists in the artist’s (or author’s) nation and even if no copyright notice is affixed to the work. In California law, at least, copyright remains with the artist unless it is transferred to another party in writing, and that may be true elsewhere as well. Check and make sure!

A character, on the other hand, is trademarked. It has no existence independent of the work(s) in which it appears. It is an idea, and ideas cannot be copyrighted.

Unregistered trademarks use the “™” symbol; registered trademarks use the “®” symbol.

Look at any Marvel comic book, particularly one dating from the 1990s. Down in the tiny legalese at the foot of the first page, called the indicia, one will find some variation on the following: “[Such-and-so character] and the distinctive likeness thereof are trademarks of Marvel Comics Group.” They don’t use the word “copyright” there, because legally they can’t.

The one similarity between copyrights and trademarks is that they do not have to be registered for their owners to assert them. Generally, unless the trademark is owned by a large corporation, and even then not always, it isn’t worthwhile to pay the fees and go through the hassle of registering a trademark.

The major difference between the two is that protecting a trademark requires more effort and vigilance than protecting a copyright. If another party begins using a trademarked idea, and the owner does not actively defend it, the trademark can be nullified, throwing it into the public domain. That’s happened to a number of big companies, and it’s why authors are so stiff about fan fiction. It could destroy their intellectual property rights.