11Nov
Design Patent FAQ: 4 Vital Insights to Secure Your Innovative Design
How an invention looks can be as important as what it does.
Over the past few decades, the plethora of content that falls under “Intellectual Property” has radically changed and developed. What hasn´t changed is that inventors and innovators still require protection for their designs, ideas, brands, and products. Patent attorneys like Howard M. Cohn, who have been in the IP area of law for 30 years or more, have experienced every aspect of the preparation and prosecution of provisional and non-provisional patents, trademarks and service marks, patent infringement matters, licensing patented inventions, licensing negotiations, and copyright matters. Getting the right patent...
10Sep
Copyright Your Software: 3 Key Reasons for Strong Protection
Copyright Your Software law is the most important legal protection available to software publishers. Here's why.
One of the best ways for software authors to protect their work is to register it with the U.S. Copyright Office. Registration is easy and cheap. For the significant benefits copyright provides, it's one of the great insurance deals of all time. You don't have to register your work to get copyright protection — the instant your software becomes fixed in a tangible medium, you own the copyright. That means that no one may copy, distribute, display, or make adaptations of the work without your...
04Aug
IPR Procedure: Challenges to Enforceable Patents
Challenges to Patents: How the AIA’s IPR Procedure Impacts You
There hasn’t been a reform to United States patent law as considerable as the American Invests Act (AIA) since 1952. One of the AIA’s most noteworthy components is the recent Inter Parte Review (IPR) procedure. The IPR procedure allows any enforceable patent to be challenged. Even more surprising is that patents issued before the implementation of the AIA can be challenged as well. On September 16, 2012, the brand new IPR procedure will replace the Inter Partes Reexamination procedure that’s currently in play. Similar to the Inter Partes Reexamination procedure,...
21Jul
5 Critical Reasons to Protect Your Innovative Trade Secrets Now
Are you protecting the innovative secrets that set you apart from the competition?
Ideas, industry trade secrets, and innovative design concepts are some of the most important factors that determine the future earnings of a company. They certainly are the elements that set a company apart from their competition. So it should come as a huge surprise that a recent survey found that two out of every three executives felt that they were failing to recognize or protect the soft assets of company ideas, secrets, intellectual property, and design concepts. Why are so many companies failing to protect themselves and solidify their...
14Jul
Social Media Copyright Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them
Social Media Copyright Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them
An important fact to know is that if you post photographs or articles that you find on the internet on your website, Facebook or Linked-in page, you are violating copyright laws. To begin, let’s understand that a copyright is an original work of authorship that’s fixed in any tangible medium. So if someone takes a photograph or writes an article, it is automatically copyrighted, even if it has not been registered with the copyright office. If in fact the copyrighted material has been registered within two months of its publication or before you...
20Jun
Micro Entity Status: Save Up to 75% on Patent Fees
USPTO’s Micro Entity Status: Affordable Patents for Inventors
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), part of the United States Commerce Department, has published a Federal Register titled Changes to Implement Micro Entity Status for Paying Patent Fees. The goal of this register is to put into effect the micro entity provision that’s part of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA). According to the AIA, an applicant who’s considered a micro entity can qualify to pay patent fees that have been reduced by up to 75%. This discount applies to the patent fees for filing, searching, examining, issuing, appealing and...
30May
Protect Your Software: Patents and Innovation Tips
Protect Your Software: Patents and Innovation Tips
Despite the protestations of some, software is patentable in in the United States. There are some jurisdictions that do not allow for the patenting of software or computer implemented processes, but the law in the United States allows for software to be patented. Given the software patents are my business, one of the questions I typically receive from an inventor is: What software can be patented? How does one know that what they have is something that can be protected? The short answer is this: In my experience those who come to me...
04May
5 Essential Steps in Trademark Litigation: Protect Your Brand
Trademark protection and litigation is put in place in order to ensure that consumers don’t confuse the sources of their purchased goods. Trademarks are typically registered with a trademark office, which protects them under the law. In some cases, even unregistered trademarks are protected. Trademark infringement occurs when someone uses a trademark or a similar trademark without being given the rights to the trademark by the owner.
