Dear Doc: The spouse and I recently visited New York City, and while there, we went to see the “Vessel“, which is “an interactive staircase and art installation located at Hudson Yards”. It was interesting, but I felt uneasy because I felt that by going there, I was somehow giving up a lot of my […]

Consider this situation: you get to work one morning and attempt to open your computer.  A pop-up message tells you that your hard drive is encrypted and demands that you make a payment, in Bitcoin, to get access to your files.  Your coworkers have the same experience.  Your company’s servers are frozen.  You and your […]

In our experience, trademark applicants are often confused about the specimen requirements submitted with a trademark application involving goods (as opposed to services).  The specimen is used to prove “use in commerce.” Use in commerce under the Lanham Act is deemed to be when the mark is “placed in any manner on the goods or […]

Dear Doc: As part of my profession, I often create things that I present to my clients. For example, I may create a floor plan or an interior design drawing. I may create renderings of what a project will look like when completed. I create bills of materials, supplier lists, written specifications, and all sorts […]

This week the European Parliament approved a controversial copyright law, the “Copyright Directive” (“Directive”), that may have serious implications for both providers and consumers of online content in Europe. While this may not be relevant to most of our readership, it may be an important testing ground for changes in US copyright law. For example, […]

A patent is property and the claims of a patent determine the value of that property.  The words are important, folks.  Consider the following (fictitious) claim: A love detector, the love detector comprising: a computer configured to determine whether a user is in love That’s called a “functional” claim – the claim addresses what the […]