One of the exclusive rights in copyright granted to the creator of a work is the right to distribute it. For instance, if you self-publish a book — a popular activity these days — you also have the exclusive right to make copies and distribute them to whomever you want. The distribution right, however, is […]
All posts by: Adam Garson
Patent Reform Signed into Law
September 30, 2011
Patent
On September 16, 2011 President Obama signed the ‘America Invents Act‘ into law. More than five years in the making, the Act will have profound consequences for inventors, for companies whose employees create inventions and for persons accused of patent infringement. Over the next several newsletters, we will bring you up to speed and explain […]
Descriptive Trademarks Before the Board: Apple Loses One
September 30, 2011
Trademark
When clients ask us to file a trademark application, one of the first things we evaluate is the strength of the proposed trademark. Is it a strong, distinctive mark that will pass muster with trademark law, or is it a weak, non-distinctive mark that will inevitably be rejected by the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO)? […]
Protecting oneself from personal liability is top on the list when a business owner forms a corporation or similar entity. Lawyers and courts refer to this protection as the “corporate veil”. Be careful, though, because your corporate veil is not armor clad. Larry Chasin, president of Ideal Diamond Solutions, Inc. (IDS), learned this the hard […]
Back in June 2009, we wrote about protecting trademarks under Facebook’s new URL redesign, which permitted a member to use a personal name as part of his or her Facebook address. Aware that the redesign offered new opportunities for trademark infringement, Facebook simultaneously issued guidelines for protecting trademark rights should a Facebook owner steal a […]
Your trademarks are among your company’s most valuable assets; controlling them is a necessity for successful branding. Domain names, particularly if they incorporate your trademarks, are part of your intellectual property portfolio and demand as much attention as your other assets. Sometimes, through no fault of your own, another company owns a domain name, which […]
ICAAN Changes the Web!
June 29, 2011
Internet Law
It is not an understatement to suggest that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers’ (ICANN) new plan to increase the number of top level domains is one of the biggest changes to the Domain Name System since it was founded. Top Level Domains (gTLDs) are those domain names at the the highest level […]
Yes, folks, there may be method (a little bit) to his madness. Charlie Sheen has filed trademark applications for 24 trademarks. All your favorite sayings: “violent torpedo of truth,” “that’s what winners do,” “park your nonsense,” “you’ve been warned,” “I’m not bi–polar, I’m bi–winning,” “defeat is not an option,” “duh winning,” and the list goes […]
On Friday, February 11, 2011 from 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (“FPRI”), Lawrence Husick will be presenting on the subject of “Understanding Cyberspace as a Battlefield.” The FPRI describes Lawrence’s presentation as follows: Cyberwar, as Richard Clarke recently explained to FPRI’s members, is the next great threat to national […]
A popular method for protecting and managing intellectual property (“IP”) assets — high valued assets, in particular — is to transfer them to a special company created for the purpose of creating, protecting, licensing, and monitoring, IP. Typically, a corporation may create a subsidiary to hold its IP, which it may license back to the […]