Patents, trademarks and copyrights are different aspects of the same central idea. They are various kinds of intellectual property that secure the rights of the owner of a creation. However, these three have some significant differences.
The primary difference is that the type of rights accorded by patents is for a tangible or theoretical invention, while that provided by a copyright is for a creative document, or image envisaged by the author. A trademark, on the contrary, can be a word or a logo that can differentiate products of one company from the others.
Secondly, patents are the strongest forms of intellectual property, especially because they are guided by strict rules and regulations. This is to say that even if the infringer has no real knowledge of the infringement, he will be held responsible for the same. Thus patents provide greater safety against infringement, whereas copyright and trademarks offer for reasonable use and other exceptions.
A patent is normally awarded for a span of 20 years, after which it goes into the public domain. On the other hand, trademarks can continue for an infinite time period while copyrights are valid for 60-70 years from the date of creation of that work. Moreover, patents are more comprehensive and accord broader safety than others. Patents safeguard not only the expression of ideas like copyrights do but they also protect the principles and mechanisms applied in a specific invention.
Finally, since these three kinds of IPR provide different levels of safety for different things, the processes for filing an application for them are also quite different. For example, the application for a patent has to have a proper disclosure of the product, whereas the one for copyright needs enclosing a copy of the original work itself, and the one for trademark just needs a proper check for similar marks in the market.
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