Legal News
Copyright / Why You Should Always Take the Necessary Steps to Copyright the Content of Your Website
On behalf of The Myers Law Group posted in Copyright on Friday, March 13, 2015. As a small business owner you know full well that having an impressive website is vital for the success of your business. You elected to invest significant time and money to build the site or to employ a reputable web designer to separate your website from your competitors. You may have also chosen to hire a search engine optimization firm in hopes of obtaining a first page search engine ranking on Google or elsewhere in order to increase new customer income generated from internet acquisition. Now, how can you protect yourself from competitors exploiting all your time, effort, and monies spent, by simply copying your web content and using it as their own on their website? Answer: copyright your website content (including pictures) with the United States Copyright Office ("USCO"). This article briefly outlines the process of registering [...]
Pom Wonderful Protects Its Pom-Trademark
On behalf of The Myers Law Group posted in Trademarks on Wednesday, March 11, 2015. If you've ever had pomegranate juice from the supermarket, chances are, it's Pom Wonderful. Pom Wonderful spends tremendous amounts of time and energy marketing its products - and bringing lawsuits against other companies' uses that may infringe its trademarks. Indeed, Pom Wonderful recently succeeded in bringing an action against Pur, which is known for making water filters, for selling a pomegranate-flavored energy drink called "Pom." The lessons learned from that case are helpful for anyone considering bringing a trademark action. Trademark infringement cases are important because they help companies control their brand and ensure that appropriate revenue is directed toward their company, and not to a competitor trying to benefit from the original company's goodwill. Most companies do not want to see their brand "diluted" when a similar product enters the market. Pom Wonderful sued Pur for trademark [...]
Patent: First to File
On behalf of The Myers Law Group posted in Patents on Thursday, February 26, 2015. When it comes to claiming rights over patentable technology, the United States recently joined the rest of the world in adopting a "first to file" system. This change, part of the sweeping America Invents Act ("AIA"), went into effect March 16, 2013. As many have noted, the law significantly impacted the way intellectual property is protected. Under the new system, even if an inventor is the first to invent something, she must quickly file a patent application on her invention before anyone else files or could lose out to an inventor who thought of the idea after her, but filed before her. Thus, the new federal legislation creates a risk for those who are silent or secretive about their invention-and encourages inventors not to sit on their rights. As an example, if Inventor A invents something in February [...]
What is a Copyright?
On behalf of The Myers Law Group posted in Copyright on Wednesday, February 25, 2015. A copyright is a type of legal protection, under federal law, for authors of "original works of authorship," meaning literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and other intellectual works. A work need not be published to be protected - an experienced intellectual property attorney can explain this distinction in further detail. The law authorizes a copyright owner to do things such as reproduce his or her work; sell or rent it; or perform the work publicly (such as by releasing songs). Copyrights protect original works of authorship in a "fixed" tangible form of expression. As long as the fixation may be communicated with the help of a device or machine, the copyright is considered fixed, even if the work is not perceptible. For instance, books, manuscripts, or films are all fixed tangible forms of expression. Categories of copyrightable works include [...]
So You’re Starting a Food Truck: How Do You Protect Your Intellectual Property?
On behalf of The Myers Law Group posted in Intellectual Property on Tuesday, February 17, 2015. There you are, finally rolling the dice and pursuing your culinary aspirations. You are starting your own food truck business. You have your unique concept, you have a potential catchy name and logo, you have a secret sauce that you believe consumers will eat even if it is served on plywood, you bought your food truck, you just launched your website, and you are all over social media. Then it dawns on you that you failed to take any steps to protect your company's intellectual property rights. This article briefly outlines the steps that you can take to protect your intellectual property rights while also making sure you are not infringing on someone else's. A trademark is a word, phrase, symbol, and/or design that identifies and distinguishes the source of the goods of one party from those [...]
Protecting Your Patent Portfolio
On behalf of The Myers Law Group posted in Patents on Thursday, February 12, 2015. Your business's patent portfolio, or the list of patents owned by your company, contains the fruits of your labor, so to speak. Managing your patent portfolio and comparing it to those of other companies is essential to helping you better determine the economic value of your own patents and maintaining your competitive edge in the marketplace. It also helps you keep an eye on potential copycats, which can be an irksome and costly issue to deal with. When other businesses are copying your inventions, they are profiting off of your hard work, while also breaking the law. Apatent is an "intellectual property right granted to an inventor 'to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention throughout the United States or importing the invention into the United States' for a limited time in exchange [...]
The Basics of Trademark Litigation
On behalf of The Myers Law Group posted in Trademarks on Tuesday, February 10, 2015. If you are like many business owners, you take pride in the name of your business and/or product, which are likely the result of hard work and substantial investment, of both the financial and time variety. Hopefully you have worked with anexperienced Orange County trademark lawyer to protect these forms of intellectual property as too often, competitors try to capitalize on a business's success or reputation by using the same or a similar name for comparable businesses and products, often harming your business in the process. If this is happening to you, what can you do to protect your business's good name? Legally speaking, a trademark is a word, symbol, or phrase, used to identify a particular manufacturer or seller's products and distinguish them from the products of another and is protected by both federal and state laws. [...]
What is a Trademark?
On behalf of The Myers Law Group posted in Trademarks on Thursday, February 5, 2015. A trademark is a brand name: a word, phrase, design, sound, or symbol. For example, the designs of the "golden arches" associated with McDonald's fast food restaurants and the Nike "swoosh" are trademarks. This form of intellectual property is significant because the public learns to identify or rely on certain marks to represent a level of quality related to the products or services it purchases. In a sense, trademarks provide reassurance to the public that what they purchase will be of the same quality as other items of that mark. An individual or company obtains trademark rights in one of two ways. First, a trademark may be obtained by filing an application with the United States Patent & Trademark Office ("USPTO"). The application can be based upon actual use of the trademark on the goods or services you [...]
How Do I Obtain a Patent?
On behalf of The Myers Law Group posted in Patents on Tuesday, February 3, 2015. While "intellectual property" may sound like a complicated area of the law, its basic principles are simple: at its core, intellectual property law is about who owns property that is the result of mental efforts. The owner of this type of property has rights based on federal laws concerning patents, trademarks, and copyrights, as well as state laws concerning trade secrets. A patent provides an owner with protection over a tangible thing. The federal government issues patents, which are documents that give the owner the right to exclude other people from making, using, or selling the invention. A patent owner has this exclusive right for twenty years. While some may argue that twenty years is not nearly long enough to maximize a patent's value, this time period is intended to recognize and reward particular inventors' efforts as well [...]