Keep Your Eye On Your Trademarks: Lessons From The Automotive Industry
The prudent business owner or corporate officer keeps a finger on the pulse of their enterprise, carefully watching marketing trends, sales figures, profits, losses, and productivity levels. So often overlooked however, is a business’s intellectual properties, especially trademarks. These properties are easily taken for granted, or their importance is underestimated. Be aware of what you […]
Protecting a Sensory Attribute of Food by Patent
By Robert J. Lewis, 2006 Thousands of patents have been issued protecting various aspects of food products and their methods of manufacture, except one. Can a food product be patented that is differentiated from other food products by a sensory attribute such as its taste? The simple answer is yes, but it may not be […]
Wild, Wild Web!
The Internet has created a marketplace never contemplated by our forefathers. Legitimate, well-respected retailers and con-artists alike have found the Internet to be a veritable field day for commerce. Protected music is traded amongst millions of audiophiles with a sense of absolute entitlement. Counterfeit products are offered for sale under the guise of legitimate trademarks. […]
Pitfalls of Patent Marking
Labeling your products with expired patent numbers or marking products not covered by a patent could expose your company to litigation, hefty fines, or forced settlements to avoid litigation from plaintiffs seeking quick payouts. Patentees selling products covered by a U.S. patent or patent application are advised by patent attorneys to mark their products using […]
How to Destroy a Trademark Without Even Trying!
Did you know that when the owner of a trademark fails to exercise sufficient quality control over a licensee’s use of the trademark, the trademark can be rendered unprotectable? While facts vary from case to case, when naked licensing is found, the trademark owner can be found to have lost its ability to enforce a […]
Tips For Optimizing The Term Of Your Patent
The adoption of just a few basic strategies will help to increase the term of your patent. During the term of the patent, the patent owner has the right to exclude others from making, using or selling the patented invention. It therefore follows that the longer the term of the patent the greater its potential […]
Patents in Europe are becoming More Affordable
Thanks to the London Agreement, the cost of validating a European Patent grant in multiple member states of the European Patent Convention (EPC) is becoming more affordable. Prior to the London Agreement coming into force, the EPC member countries had 26 different national languages and required a patent owner to validate a European granted patent […]
Patent Reform Advances Through Congress
The first major change in U.S. Patent Law since the 1950’s is ready to take place. The U.S. Senate recently voted 95-5 to pass the Patent Reform Bill, sending the Bill to the House of Representatives for consideration, where the House Judiciary Committee voted 32-3 to recommend its enactment. Known as the America Invents Act, […]
Pro Se Trademark Applications
A new Stanford University Law School study confirms that those who seek an attorney’s help in registering a trademark are more likely to obtain a registration than those who go it alone. After compiling 25 years’ worth of trademark application/registration data from the United States Patent & Trademark Office, Stanford confirmed that 60% of applicants […]
Trademark and Domain Name Co-Dependence
Trademark registration is critical in protecting your domain name. Trademarks are words, phrases, or graphics that serve as “source identifiers” for specific goods or services. More commonly, trademarks are “brand names” or logos identifying a brand. Domain names are internet website addresses. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, (ICANN), the entity responsible for […]
