You do not have to ask permission to use a trademark, logo, or product bearing the trademark in your film as long as you use the trademark or logo as it was intended to be used.
Names do not have copyright protection, but if you use a brand name in such a way that it appears that the maker of the brand made, sponsored, or endorsed the video, that maker may take action against you for trademark infringement.
Short answer: It is perfectly legal to use brands without permission. Long answer: Depending on the short film and your intentions for it; you can always ask the companies first because it could lead to some small issues down the line. No, this is actually a different thing.
Videographers typically don't need permission to feature trademarks in videos, but must consider potential trademark dilution, as well as advertisement opportunities and sponsors.
Generally if you are using a product or showing a place as it is commonly portrayed, and the logos are visible, you're on pretty good legal ground (for example, someone driving a Chevy car to a Chili's or drinking a Coke).
You can use whatever you want in your films, and as long as you're not portraying the brand/product in a negative way, there's nothing they can do about it. If you are portraying an iPhone as the anti-Christ or whatever, you probably want to blur/hide the logo.
Under trademark law's fair use doctrine, you can use another owner's trademark without their permission for purposes such as comparative advertising, news reports, parodies, and criticisms.
You can have a brand, but decide not to protect that brand by registering it as a trademark. If you choose not to register your brand as a trademark, however, anyone could misuse your brand or create a brand so similar to yours that people can't tell the difference between them.
Even though it is not illegal to use the brand names of the real-life products in the creative work such as movies, TV shows, and music videos, the producers however, are very cautious in such situations.
The key reason to incorporate or form a LLC is liability protection. If you have no assets to risk, there's very little to protect, and virtually no reason to incorporate. In fact, a corporation won't even provide liability protection unless it is adequately capitalized.
Copyright in a motion picture is automatically secured when the work is created and “fixed” in a copy. Only the expression fixed in a motion picture (camera work, dialogue, sounds, and so on) is protected under copyright. Copyright does not cover the idea or concept behind a work or any characters portrayed in it.
The copyright of an independent film generally belongs to the filmmakers. This includes the director, producer, and screenwriter. However, there may be some exceptions depending on the specifics of the film. For example, if the film was made as part of a school project, the school may own the copyright.
Product displacement is the removing of trademarked products from primarily visual media in order to avoid the payment of licensing fees, if the trademark owner objects, or if the broadcaster would prefer not to publicise a product for free, if the owners have not paid for it to be included in a programme.
I usually avoid using too many product names but nobody is going to sue you for sticking a product name in a screenplay. If the script goes into development it is the producer who is responsible for getting clearance not the screenwriter. It will be their butt that will get sued not the screenwriter.
An alternative is to contact the brand owner seeking written permission to use the products in your film. As mentioned above, the savvy negotiator may even be able to negotiate some benefit for the film from the brand owner in return for the inclusion of the product in the film.
You should not use images or videos you find on websites or social media without obtaining permission from the copyright holder. If you want to use images and videos from the Internet on your website, look for royalty-free stock photos and videos to avoid copyright infringement.
Common law trademarks are free and do not require any paperwork or forms. There is no way to register a name trademark for free because you will always have to pay at least a small fee that covers the costs of examining and processing your trademark application. There is no way to get a federal trademark for free.
The basic cost to trademark a business name ranges from $225 to $600 per trademark class. This is the cost to submit your trademark application to the USPTO. The easiest and least expensive way to register your trademark is online, through the USPTO's Trademark Electronic Application System (TEAS).
Trademarked names are registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and are protected nationally. If a business name is already trademarked, you are prohibited from using it even if the company operates in a different state to yours. Trademark issues can be complex.
Check if a Trademark is Registered. You can search all applied-for and registered trademarks free of charge by using the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)'s Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS).
A trademark typically protects brand names and logos used on goods and services. A patent protects an invention. A copyright protects an original artistic or literary work. For example, if you invent a new kind of vacuum cleaner, you would apply for a patent to protect the invention itself.
Netflix officially recommends submitting through a third party with ties to their company. If you contact Netflix individually, you unfortunately won't hear anything back. Submit your movie to a third party, like a distributor or aggregator.
If you're creating a short film, stock footage might be the last thing you think of, but it should be the first. When you make a short film, you spend a lot of time planning and storyboarding your movie before getting your camera out, and you can use stock footage here to save both time and money.
A short film is basically any film that is too short to be considered a feature film. There are no set boundaries on this, although the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all credits".
