- Sep 18, 2019
Trademark Trial & Appeal Board: What Is It?
Introduction What is the secret shadow court where rejected and contested trademark claims go? Who comprises this mysterious body? And what powers do they wield in their never ending quest for justice and determining the rights of millions of trademark owners? Well, it’s actually a bit less melodramatic than that, even if it is a bit unknown. The name of this group is the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, located in Alexandria, VA, and is a body within the United State Patent
- Jun 17, 2018
How Long Does It Take to Register a Trademark?
As I threatened to do a longtime ago, I am trying out simplified articles that are quicker to read and less dense than some of my regular treatises. Perhaps these will be more accessible to a wider audience (power to the people!). I hope you find it useful. This one is on trademarks and applying for them. If you want a more in depth approach, feel free to read my prior article on the subject here. Disclaimer: The following information does NOT constitute legal advice and is o
- Dec 17, 2017
Video Games: How To Legally "Steal" Other People’s Ideas Part II
Last time, we talked about copyright and video games we discussed how copyright protects the literal computer code of the gaming programs, as well as what you see on the screen. Certainly, copycatting in the video game industry often has been rampant. This article will get a bit more legally technical and go back and explore in great detail *how* courts determine if two computer programs are actually similar enough that one program used the other one without permission and th
- Nov 18, 2017
Video Games: How To Legally "Steal" Other People’s Ideas Part I
Haha! Got you on that one, didn’t I? I bet you wanted to read the next few lines. Well, I wasn’t entirely exaggerating, but neither was I necessarily telling the full story on that one. This is a new series I am starting on the broad subject of “Intellectual Property” as applied to video games. We will cover copyright, trademarks and some aspects of patent law, as well as other boring stuff. However, a lot of this information is applicable to other software as well, and the b
- Apr 17, 2017
Copyrights and Copy Cats (Intellectual Property Series II)
So you wrote a new play, a movie script, or computer game, and you want to prevent people from stealing your creative juices as you try to find investors, or after you published it. What are you rights? How do you protect them? What do you do if you are the victim of idea theft? That’s a lot to cover, and I hope to get to all of it eventually, but for today, let’s go over the basics of copyright, and later on, I’ll get to the more advanced material. Disclaimer: The following
- Mar 17, 2017
Do I Need to Trademark My Logo?
Lately, I have been getting some requests for information regarding Intellectual Property, so I thought I would create a little something about trademarks. Disclaimer: The following information does NOT constitute legal advice and is only for general educational purposes. Each situation is different and specific legal issues usually require additional research and investigation, so do not rely on this article to address a particular legal issue; use this as a starting point
- Oct 17, 2015
Blogging Liability II: News Aggregation: (The Art of Stealing er Borrowing Other People's Posts)
This is the second article on the pitfalls blogging operators face. A very popular type of blog is the news aggregation website. you know those websites with headlines that beg, borrow or steal content from other actual stories and may or may not click through. According to Wikipedia, “a feed aggregator, feed reader, news reader, RSS reader or simply aggregator, is client software or a web application which aggregates syndicated web content such as online newspapers, blogs,
- Aug 17, 2015
Blogging Liability Part I: Defamation
So, you operate a website or a blog on someone else’s website and you really enjoy it or you use it as a main source of revenue. You are not alone. Some estimates put the number of blogs out there at 450 million.[1] One source claims the following statistics: small businesses with blogs generate 128% more leads than those without, that interesting website content is one of the top three reasons people follow brands on social media, that nearly 81% of consumers state they tr
