Blog – Adam Garson Law

Our office frequently receives calls from young entrepreneurs asking us to copyright their latest fashion design.  Sadly, we tell them that copyright does not offer the protection they seek and, in fact, they will have to enter the market place with the expectation that their designs, if good enough, will inspire “knock off” copies. This […]

On July 21, 2009, Adam Garson made a presentation on the basics of copyright law to the Lehigh Valley Writers Symposium.  In attendance were writers, publishers, photographers and online entrepreneurs.  The group asked many questions in a lively post-presentation discussion.  If your group would like Adam or other lawyers at Lipton, Weinberger & Husick to […]

David Kappos was sworn in as the new Administrator of the PTO this month. As Administrator, he will be the chief executive officer of the agency and in charge of the PTO’s several thousand employees, including patent and trademark examiners.  Mr. Kappos has spent his career as in-house patent counsel to IBM, the single largest […]

The Copyright Act is continually subject to pressures created by technological and economic forces.  Here’s yet another example. Composers and producers are urging Congress to change copyright law so that music airing in a audio-visual downloads are considered public performances and, therefore, deserving of royalty compensation.  Federal law, of course, grants owners of copyrights the […]

For several years, the U.S. has considered methods of doing business and computer software as proper subjects for patents, while the rest of the world generally does not. In October 2008, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals considered the issue of what processes can be patented in the case of In Re Bilski.  The Federal […]

Real Trademarks Used in Virtual Worlds – Part II In our June 2009 newsletter, we wrote about the challenges posed by Virtual Worlds such as Second Life to trademark owners.  The commercialization of virtual worlds by real life companies and the apparently rampant unauthorized use of trademarks by virtual world residents has created new “territory” […]

If the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) has its way, each time your ringtone sounds in a public place, it is a public performance and, assuming you didn’t pay a royalty (a good assumption), you have violated copyright law.  That’s the claim made by ASCAP in responding to AT&T’s Motion for Summary […]

Creative people are, well, creative.  The late Michael Jackson was an inventor as well as an entertainer.  He held U.S. Patent 5,255,452 issued October 26, 1993 for a “Method and Means for Creating Anti-Gravity Illusion.”  His invention was a dance shoe featuring a heel that he could secure to the floor while performing a dance […]

If you create a corporate entity in a state where your company may not have a physical presence, most states will require you to maintain a corporate agent, that is, an individual or entity who is responsible for receiving legal documents — notices and court papers — on behalf of your company. Pennsylvania differs in […]

Why not skip the cost and uncertainty of the patent process and simply mark your product as patented or as ‘patent pending’ when you have no patent or no patent pending? The patent statute at 35 U.S.C. 292 provides that falsely labeling something as ‘patented’ or ‘patent pending’ is subject to a fine of up […]