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i have been doing some research into this but till cant decide which to use. i understand that the programs i wright will need to have a copyright mark on them as its text and software work written by me the authour. however what about if i wanted to create a logo for my program .. a logo designed and created by myself of course, would this be subject to copyright or would i need to trademark it??
logos generally fall under the trademark ™ or registered trademark ® category.
The thought of if you need to trademark it depends on the likelyhood someone would have interest in stealing/using it for themselves I suppose.
Trademarks are just for names. Here's a situation:
You make a new product and call it "Wizbang". It's a good product from your company "Jay-co". It's reliable, only failing 0.5% of the time and is built to last about 2 years before needing replacement.
People see the Wizbang, are interested in it, and start buying it. They like it so some hype is built. Your sales go up.
Suddenly, some jerk company called "Jenner LLC" starts making some cheap knockoff of the Wizbang that barely performs it's job well, and is so underengineered, it doesn't even work 10% of the time and has a tendancy to break after two weeks of use. His box also calls the product the "Wizbang". His box even has the same color scheme and a very similar design to your box.
People being idiots, see "Wizbang" and remembering the hype from your product, buy the Jenner LLC one on the shelf not knowing what a piece of junk this one is.
Suddenly, the hype bubble pops and a negative hype builds about how cruddy Wizbangs are and aren't worth the money. People typically blame the product in general first before the company that made it.
Your profits tank while Jenner LLC, who was only in it for the quick money, just close their doors and pocket the profits they earned from your hype bubble while looking for the next sucker who doesn't trademark their product names...
Copyrights on the other hand, are used to protect complete authorships such as books, music, video, and programming code.