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[FreeEagle]

My wife taught our cat some VERY Unique tricks, we want to release video, we know we need to protect it, but don't know where to start.  What are some of the specific area's we need to watch out for?  Say like if we submitted the video America's funniest, you tube, personal websites etc.  We also do cat shows, (cats don't normally perform tricks at shows).  We were planning to allow him to perform at an upcoming show, can intellectual property rights protect us from allowing others from taking and / or sharing video in area that we don't give permission to?  Is there a way to stop others from teaching same trick to their cats, and then claiming as own?

[Zonath]

Well, as an initial matter, any video taken of your cat would automatically be subject to a copyright owned by the person who shoots the video.  Registering the video with the US Copyright Office grants some additional benefits, but is not absolutely necessary in order for your video to gain copyright protection.

Of course, whether or not you have the resources to protect your copyright can be a fairly important question as far as the channel through which you choose to distribute it goes.  After all, people are not always the most respectful of copyrighted material once it leaks onto sites like YouTube, and while the US copyright law does give you a toolbox of things you can use in order to attempt to protect your copyrights (such as a DMCA takedown notice), once something gets out 'into the wilds' of the Internet, it can be next-to-impossible to retain complete control over it (especially once you find yourself having to sue in the courts of another country in order to enforce your copyrights).  At the same time, large media outlets (like the producers of Funniest Home Videos) are more likely to respect copyrights, but you also generally give up a lot when you submit a video to a show like that -- make sure you read and understand any legal agreements you might be entering into by sending in a video.

As far as the question regarding performance in a show goes, this is a bit of a murky subject.  In general,  the types of performances the Copyright Act protects are dramatic and choreographic performances more than stunts and tricks.  In this case, I would think that this type of performance would be more likely to be protected via the concept of 'publicity rights' rather than via copyright.  For an example of a well-known publicity rights case, see Zacchini v. Scripps-Howard Broadcasting Co, 433 U.S. 562 (1977), where a human cannonball act sued a news broadcaster who filmed his act.  The problem with publicity rights in your particular circumstance, at the same time, is that publicity rights rely upon state laws, not all states recognize publicity rights, and I am entirely unsure whether or not any state has ever recognized a right to publicity in the performance of an animal.

In general, copyright law would also not provide you with a vehicle through which to stop anyone else from teaching their cats similar tricks.  Copyright law protects creative expression, and not procedures and ideas.  If the method you use to teach the cats the trick is sufficiently innovative and novel, it might be subject to patent protection, but that's a lot more difficult to get than copyright protection.

So in conclusion, your own video of the cat can almost certainly be protected, if you have the willpower and resources to do so.  The rest of what you'd look to protect is somewhat less likely to be especially easy to protect, even if it might be possible to do so.