Legal News
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 [...]