Copyright, Trade Mark question and needed advice

Copyright question

[gameaholica]

Hello,
my first post here.

First the background of my situation:

I have recently started a videogame community and news website. The website is based off forums I created around 8 years ago. I have not registered the website for copyright or trademarked it as I wanted to finish creating my logos etc.

While creating the website an old friend rented a video game server that came with a web page. He used the name of my website and old forums and asked me if I wanted to work together and we could have the server as part of the community. I agreed as long as he agreed to the server remaining a "open community" and not a videogame clan server.

This was about a month ago... within the last two weeks I noticed he changed the wording on his server and web page now showing "clan" and his practices have been of the same nature. I talked to him twice about it and nothing changed.

I posted to him that I was no longer associating my website with his server or web page, and to please change the name.

He responded by banning me from his web page and stating that I do not have copyright on the website so anyone can use the name.

Now for my questions:

What can I do?
Is it too late to copyright the website?
Whats better, copyright or trademark? or would I copyright the website and trademark logos?

[weeks]

No, it is not too late to copyright or trademark the website. Go right ahead and tell your friend that, BTW, you're registering it and he'll have to pay for legal fees as well.

Wikipedia has good info on this. Check it out, take action and send your friend a link to the info you find.

[purplecape]

Get it registered before you tell your former friend.

Trademark is for name, "dress," and other specifics that identify a business or brand.

Copyright is for content.

[gameaholica]

just an update... he changed the name, then took down his whole site after posting a bunch of negative post in his own forums towards me. The nice thing about this is I learned a lesson. I am still going to copyright my website and trademark my final logo when I come up with one.

[purplecape]

Don't wait to come up with a logo. Trademark the name. Then trademark the logo.

[gameaholica]

will do a.s.a.p.

by the way.. where is a good website that creates banners, images, etc. ?

[dailypress]

Get it registered before you tell your former friend.
Trademark is for name, "dress," and other specifics that identify a business or brand.

Copyright is for content.

Trademark is also for brand and logo.
Patent is for ideas.
Copyright is for content such as context/images/videos and ...

[purplecape]

Well, strictly speaking patent is not for ideas. Patents are for specific, describable implementations of ideas--inventions. Traditionally it was for physical objects but has recently been extended to business methods and the like.

Here are the official US govt definitions:

[uspto.gov...]