Artistic Wars

For those of you who create, a friendly reminder:

Whether you write a blog or freelance articles here and there, host a website, or own a business, it is vitally important that you protect your identity and work. Rip-off's happen all the time. Sometimes, it's as innocent as someone posting a photo on their blog without crediting the photographer. Other times, it's a blatant plagiarism of someone else's design or work. Luckily, it's often simply a case of misunderstanding blog-etiquette and copyright. But in other cases, all you can do is take precautionary steps.

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Maybe I'm naive, but I always thought that if you created something unique and well-established, that competition wouldn't bother to use your work, as it eventually would get traced back to the originator. Like my blog Hue- pretty solid going on 3 years now; who would be silly enough to use any version of Hue Blog or Hue Consulting for their own business?

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But alas, people are ripping off writers, designers, and artists all the time. So my advice to you? Get your business name trademarked and your work copyrighted. It's all fun and games early on, but trust me, unscrupulous people lurking as "experts" themselves have no troubles taking what isn't theirs.

My question to you is, will a symbol on your logo, name, creation, writing, etc. really deter someone from ripping it off? Any what constitutes a broad enough gap between what you did and what they do, to consider them protected and legit?

Anyone have an experience with this?