Design Patents: 5 Powerful Tips for Securing Your Innovation
You’re inventive. You designed a product that you think will shake up the market. You have competitors, but your design is unique. You have a competitor’s edge. But how do you protect it? A design patent can help. Read on to find out how you can get 14 or 15 years of patent protection.
What is a Design Patent?
Keep in mind that a design patent can only protect the ornamental design of your product. A design patent cannot protect how it functions. A design patent is most often applied when a competitor’s product has a similar function but a different design....
Mastering Trademark Symbols: 3 Key Steps for Legal Success
The three commonly used Trademark symbols: TM, SM, and the letter R in a circle — ®. The TM and SM symbols are used with unregistered marks: TM for trademarks, or marks that represent goods, and SM for service marks, or marks that represent services. The federal registration symbol, or ®, is reserved for marks registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. There is no obligation to use the TM or SM symbols and their use has no legal significance. However, it is generally a good idea to use these symbols. When one uses the TM or...
Trademark and Domain Mastery: 10 Essential Steps for Naming Success
When picking a company name, it’s vital to initially conduct research to avoid trademark infringement or domain name conflicts. You may be infringing someone’s trademark if the use of your mark is likely to cause confusion among customers as to the source of the goods or services. The following are potential steps to avoid naming issues:
Researching Trademarks and Domains: A Step-by-Step Guide
Conduct a Google search on the name to find what other companies may be using the name. Conduct a search at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office site (www.uspto.gov) for federal trademark registrations on the...
Intellectual Property: Unlock 6 Secrets for Startup Success
When growing a unique product, technology, or service, one must consider the appropriate steps to protect the intellectual property that has been have developed. The company’s founders have a stake in ensuring that the company protects its intellectual property and avoids infringing the intellectual property rights of third parties. The following are some of the common protective measures undertaken by business start-ups:
Startup Intellectual Property
Safeguard your innovative products and services with effective startup intellectual property strategies. Learn about patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, and key agreements to protect your business assetsPatents
Patents are the best protection available for an original product....
Start-Up Business Forms: 5 Powerful Options for Success
Exploring Start-Up Business Forms: An Overview
Discover 5 powerful start-up business forms—sole proprietorships, partnerships, and more—optimized for liability and tax benefits.Sole Proprietorships
In general terms, a sole proprietorship requires no fees, legal documentation, or filings other than state and local business permits. However, there are disadvantages to functioning as a sole proprietorship: (1) it only has one owner and if additional capital is required from another investor, the form is not available and a partnership or other entity form is required and (2) a sole proprietorship provides no protection for the founder against creditors of the business. By contrast to corporations and...
Intellectual Property Liabilities: 4 Critical Mistakes to Avoid
Key Intellectual Property Liabilities to Manage
Intellectual property liabilities pose significant risks to your business, with potential impacts on asset value and growth. In business, there are multiple potential mistakes and errors and they come up in all different legal areas – from basic formation issues to labor and employment to intellectual property. Mistakes and missteps involving intellectual property can be particularly problematic because IP is a company asset; it constitutes a part of (often a significant part of ) a company’s valuation.The Issues
) Failure To Transfer the IP From The Founder Into the Company. It is an essential item...
Unlock Patent Eligibility: 3 Landmark Cases Explained
Alice's Impact on Patent Eligibility Criteria
Unlock and explore 3 landmark Supreme Court cases that define patent eligibility criteria—Bilski, Mayo, Alice—and discover what can be patented.What The Courts Have Said
There are three main cases which the Supreme Court ruled in this issue:CASE #1:
In Bilski of 2010, the Supreme Court held that claims to a method for commodities traders to lower the risk of price fluctuations was an abstract idea. Because the idea of hedging against risks is a common practice in our economy, it was ruled that an idea cannot be made patentable by limiting it to a particular field,...
Trademark Infringement: Discover 8 Key Polaroid Factors
One of the more intricate and indeed litigious aspects of trademark law arises when one party claims that another party is using a mark that infringes on the their own mark (either by using the mark without permission or by using an excessively similar mark). Of course, the defendant will seek to prove that his/her mark is sufficiently distinct enough from the first mover’s mark so that there is no infringement. Clearly, there is a certain amount of subjectivity involved in making this decision and in order to better codify the factors that go into determining whether or not...
