Different rights for different jobs
Trademark law protects things that tell customers who a product or service comes from, such as names, logos, slogans, and sometimes packaging. Copyright protects original creative expression fixed in some form, including text, photographs, artwork, music, and software. A trademark can last as long as it is used in commerce and maintained, while copyright runs for a long but fixed term. Names, titles, and short phrases generally are not protected by copyright, so a brand name is a trademark question even if it was creatively chosen. A logo can be both, a trademark as a brand identifier and a copyrighted work as artwork.
Registering each one
Federal trademark registration is handled by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, while copyright registration goes through the U.S. Copyright Office, part of the Library of Congress. The two processes look nothing alike. Trademark applications are examined for conflicts with earlier marks and for distinctiveness, and the review can take a long time. Copyright examination looks at whether the work is copyrightable and the application complete, not whether the work resembles someone else's. Who made the logo matters here: if a freelance designer created it without a written assignment, the designer may still own the copyright.
Sorting your assets
In a first meeting we go through what you actually use, from names and marks to designs, written and visual content, and code, and sort each item by which right applies, who created it, and whether paperwork shows the business owns it. We then talk about which registrations are worth the cost now and which can wait. If a dispute has already started, the same sorting tells us which claims are available, because a copying complaint and a confusion complaint are built on different proof.
