Blog – Adam Garson Law

combo lock

You may have never heard of the Berne Convention but it’s a very import international treaty governing copyrights.  Here’s a brief overview.  The Berne Convention was first adopted in Berne, Switzerland in 1886 and requires its signatory countries to safeguard the copyrights of a work created in other signatory countries as it would protect those […]

Internet and Intellectual Property

The United States Federal Government does a lot with tax dollars. One of those things is that it funds research in many areas that lead to published papers in basic science, medicine, engineering, and many more fields. Another is that it runs the Federal Court system, which publishes orders, rules, opinions, and the like. What […]

uploading photos

As an individual or small business inventor, do you feel really, really small?  The good news: after March 16, 2013 you may qualify as a ‘micro entity’ and be entitled to patent fee discounts from the PTO of 75% off large entity rates.  The bad news: large and small entity rates are going up at […]

Designs for patents

There have been a spate of reporting about the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) recent decisions about the use of social media by employees.  You may think that an employer should have absolute control over its employees’ right to talk about the employer or its customers on the Internet, but that is not the case.  […]

Internet and Intellectual Property

If you use or develop online software or smartphone “apps” then you need to know about CalOPPA.  No, that’s not some form of steam-driven musical device from an old-time carousel. It’s the California Online Privacy Protection Act, and it has very real consequences for any company that does business online. This month, the State of California […]

gavel of justice

In late November, David Pogue of the New York Times wrote about a hoaxer who plastered Facebook sites with an unsolicited message that stated: In response to the new Facebook guidelines, I hereby declare that my copyright is attached to all of my personal details, illustrations, comics, paintings, crafts, professional photos and videos, etc. (as […]

TM is for trademarks

If you want to protect a product by patent in Europe today, you generally will file an application in the European Patent Office (“EPO”).  When your application is (eventually) reviewed and approved by the EPO, you then must register the approved application with each individual European country in which you desire a patent and must […]

Copyright concepts

The estate of William Faulkner is furious.  In the past month it has filed two copyright infringement lawsuits, one against Sony Picture Classics and another against Northrop Grumman Corporation and the Washington Post Company.  In the Sony case, the Faulkner Estate claims that Sony infringed Faulkner’s copyright in the famous phrase from Requiem for a […]

Congressional seal

Dear Doc: I heard that some insanity has recently infected the Republican Study Committee, when it published a memo with the exciting title of “Three Myths About Copyright Law and Where To Start To Fix It”. What gives? Signed, M. Mouse Dear M: A young staffer at the RSC, Derek Khanna, wrote about our broken […]