At Colby Law Office, we take an entrepreneur’s perspective of Intellectual Property. The reality of any business in the new economy is that trademarks, copyrights, confidential and proprietary information, and other forms of intellectual property are essential components to the business and should not be ignored or underdeveloped. Contact Colby Law Office to help you assess and protect your intellectual property.
Colby Law Office offer business law services across New York. we provide a comprehensive service tailored to your business & its specific needs.
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A trademark is a distinctive word, phrase, symbol or design (or combination thereof) that a business uses to identify and distinguish its goods from those of other businesses. Service marks are exactly like trademarks, except they identify services rather than goods.
Trademarks and service marks can be an extremely lucrative form of intellectual property and source of passive income. For example, some companies have completely given up manufacturing the goods with which their trademarks are associated and earn all their revenue from licensing their marks to companies who do manufacture goods.
You can obtain federal trademark protection by registering your trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). A trademark may also be registered with an individual state, although the trademark will then only be protected in that specific state.
Federal registration of your mark with the USPTO provides nationwide notice of your claim to the mark. That means that other business owners will be able to locate your mark through a trademark search, making it less likely that they will use it. In addition, no one else will be able to register your mark or a confusingly similar mark. If someone does use your mark or one confusingly similar to it, you will be able to sue for trademark infringement in federal court. For these and other reasons, federal registration enhances the value of your mark in the event that you ever wish to license or sell your mark.
Even if you don’t register your trademark with the USPTO, it’s a good idea to conduct a federal trademark search before deciding on a name, slogan or other mark for your business, to make sure that no one has registered a similar mark.
Trademarks are an important part of any company’s brand strategy. Colby Law Office’s attorneys assist clients in all aspects of managing their trademark portfolios, including conducting trademark searches, filing trademark registrations with the USPTO as well as state and foreign registries, as appropriate, handling trademark opposition actions, licensing trademarks, and more.
A trademark is a distinctive word, phrase, symbol or design (or combination thereof) that a business uses to identify and distinguish its goods from those of other businesses. Service marks are exactly like trademarks, except they identify services rather than goods.
Trademarks and service marks can be an extremely lucrative form of intellectual property and source of passive income. For example, some companies have completely given up manufacturing the goods with which their trademarks are associated and earn all their revenue from licensing their marks to companies who do manufacture goods.
Copyright law protects original works of authorship, including literary, dramatic, musical, and other creative works. In order to qualify for protection, a work has to be fixed in a tangible medium of expression (for example, by writing it down or recording it) and meet minimum standards of originality.
Copyright is actually a bundle of rights. A work’s copyright owner has the exclusive right to reproduce the copyrighted work, to prepare modified works based on the original work (these are called “derivative works”), to distribute copies or recordings of the copyrighted work, and to perform or display the copyrighted work publicly. The copyright owner has the power to license any of these rights, individually or in combination, to other entities and individuals.
A work is protected by copyright as soon as it is created and, with certain exceptions, until 70 years after the author’s death. The work’s author owns the copyright, unless the author assigns the copyright to someone else. In the case of works-for-hire, an employee or contractor creates the work at the behest of an employer or other principal, who is then considered the work’s author for copyright purposes. Registration of a work’s copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office soon after the work’s publication confers various advantages, such as eligibility for particular types of damage awards in the event that the copyright is later infringed.
Certain categories of expression, such as slogans and phrases, do not qualify for copyright protection, although they may be eligible for trademark protection. Ideas and facts are also not copyrightable, although the line between uncopyrightable ideas and copyrightable expression of such ideas may sometimes be blurry.
Copyright issues can play an important role in relationships with clients, employees, independent contractors and other parties. Colby Law Office provides strategic consultation on such issues, including those related to websites, software, works-for-hire, and other works. Our attorneys are also skilled at negotiating copyright licenses, work-for-hire agreements, publishing contracts and other copyright agreements.
Under New York law, a trade secret is confidential information that provides an economic advantage to the company possessing that information. Business plans, marketing plans, customer lists, data compilations, and recipes are all examples of information that can be trade secrets. In order for information to qualify as a company’s trade secret, the company must make ascertainable steps to maintain the confidentiality of the information, for example by resorting to physical and electronic means of protection, as well as by contractual protections such as non-disclosure agreements.
Unlike other forms of intellectual property like copyrights, trademarks, and patents, trade secret protection can last indefinitely.
Movement of employees from company to company often raises trade secret issues. Colby Law Office’s attorneys can advise your company on how to conduct your hiring process in a way that reduces exposure to trade secret misappropriation claims, and how to implement policies that protect your trade secrets. Our attorneys are also experienced at drafting and negotiating non-disclosure and other confidentiality agreements.
