There’s a VAST difference, in the U.S. anyway, between the time it takes, costs to do it and complicated application to fill out for a Trademark, while the copyright thing can be done a few ways. U.S. copyrights laws, for better or worse, are relatively automatic regarding EVERYTHING you write or create that is copyrightable.
It is much better, of course, if you take the time to claim the copyright by issuing the standard statement with name and date on your creative properties, diligently defend it, watch for violations of it, and even go through the effort of sending the required copies and documentation to the right government department. Another relatively simple approach people sometime use, especially with written/printed content – songs, music scores, poems, articles, novels, etc. – is to seal and deliver an envelope containing these materials, then file them unopened in the event that a “date of creation” issue raises its ugly head for you when someone else claims copyright to the same. There are even issues with that and would likely require a court date to establish ownership of copy and rights to usage questions.
Also, while it is virtually mandatory to do a Trademark search to establish that your trademark intent doesn’t look like, duplicate or violate someone elses, and so that you can have a trademark that is viable for your production, company name and/or personal branding/marketing efforts for a region, state, area, country or world-wide. Trademarkes MUST be vigorously defended as well because you CAN actually lose your rights to it, or some elements of its protection, if you do not have enough effort invested into owning it and keeping it (think Coke, Disney, Apple) defended against possible infringement.
So, yeah, easy in a sense, even in Canada, but more difficult when you get to the realities of having, maintaining, sustaining and defending either.
