The sale price of your company increases or decreases with your intellectual property value. This is the price someone would pay specifically for your intellectual property. What is Intellectual Property? Intellectual property (IP) is one realm of property. It includes copyrights, trademarks, patents, trade secrets, and sometimes goodwill. We’ve covered copyrights and trademarks in […]
Logos: Trademark or Copyright?
When it comes to logos, you can register a copyright, trademark, or both. For the purpose of this article, logos are graphical depictions symbolizing a company. What is a Copyright? A copyright is a legal device that gives the holder the right to decide how, who, and when the copyrighted content is used. There are […]
What Should I Copyright?
What Should I Copyright? Fortunately, we have a simple analysis we like to employ to determine whether something should be registered. What is a Copyright? A copyright is a type of intellectual property that protects from the unauthorized use of creative content. Your creative content can range from a logo to series of videos. […]
Should I Trademark My Company Name?
Should I trademark my company name? Unfortunately, the answer is not a simple one. What is a Trademark? A trademark is a unique piece of intellectual property used for the purpose of defending your brand and goodwill. We’ve written a few blogs on this topic before. Trademarks can be a word, series of words, […]
Avoiding Copyright Infringement on the Internet
Copyright Infringement has become a nuisance for small business owners. It’s not because small business owners never do anything wrong. It is because a small mistake can result in massive consequences. What is a Copyright? A copyright is a legal device that gives the holder the right to decide how, who, and when the […]
Registered Copyright: Cheat Sheet for Registration
A Registered Copyright is a valuable piece of intellectual property. What is a Copyright? A copyright is a legal device that gives the holder the right to decide how, who, and when the copyrighted content is used. There are two types of copyright: common law and registered. The common law copyright is automatic. That […]
Work Made for Hire: Employees
Work made for hire is an important consideration in companies with employees. This is an area of law dealing with copyrights Copyright Anytime a person creates something creative, he or she automatically gains a copyright over that content. However, there are a few exceptions to that rule. Work made for hire is one of […]
Should I File an Intent to Use Trademark Application?
As mentioned in our Trademarks Part 2 blog, the US Patent and Trademark Office has two general types of domestic trademark applications. These are the 1(a) and 1(b) applications. A 1(b) trademark application is an Intent to Use (ITU) application. This means that you have not yet started using the proposed mark in commerce, but you have […]
Trademarks – Part 2
In Part 1 of this series (Trademarks – Part 1), we introduced trademarks and how they work, in general. In Part 2, we’re going to discuss the registration process. So if you’re already in business and profiting from your name and mark, then why register? Because registration creates a presumption that you were the first […]
Claiming Color as Part of Your Trademark
We spoke about trademarks in our prior post here, which discussed what a trademark is compared to the other types of intellectual property. Here, we plan on going a little deeper into one specific area of trademark law. Trademark Components Trademarks can have several components to them: (1) the literal element (AKA, words); (2) […]
Trademarks – Part 1
Do you know what a trademark is? Some legal terms can be confusing, and the differences between trademarks, patents, and copyrights can be unclear. Trademarks, patents, and copyrights are all distinct concepts within intellectual property, and they all serve different purposes. Let’s talk more about trademarks. Trademark Defined A trademark or service mark is a […]
Google Plus Intellectual Property Rights
Using social media is a norm for businesses in today’s world. Those who fully embrace social media find the necessity to embrace Google+ as well. The search engine giant holds a lot of power over us, so Google+ would appear as a necessity regardless of if we like the platform or not. When working in […]