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What I would say is if you’re an individual inventor, you’re in a business, you have a job, you’re doing whatever you’re doing, and you come up with an invention, it’s always our suggestion not to change your life and go try to sell this item out of the trunk of your car. The best Read More

We probably get more walk in people with automobile inventions than anything else, and 99 percent of the time it’s been done before. So just like any other product, what we have to do is a search and we have to make sure that it has not been done before. And again, with any other Read More

OEM is an Original Equipment Manufacturer, for example, an automobile manufacturer, which is different from someone that’s making replacement parts. You cannot make a replacement part if the original part is still under patent protection from the OEM. Down the road, of course, when the patent expires, you can do it. For example, there are Read More

There are basically two kinds of searches. One search is to determine if you can obtain a patent. So this is what we call a pre-examination search, where a searcher will try to see if there is anything to stop you from getting a patent, if what people have done before, what we call the Read More

When we think of a copyright, we normally think of books, movies, plays, songs, photographs, and similar items. But equally important is to ask what items cannot be copyrighted. Items such as personal names, business names, domain names, titles, slogans, short phrases such as recipes, blank forms, formulas, and general ideas can not receive copyright Read More

Many things theoretically can function as a trademark. A trademark simply needs to link a product to a company in a consumer’s mind. Normally, trademarks are words, phrases, logos, symbols, or acronyms. However, there are new classes of items that can be trademarked. These include such items as sound, such as the Intel jingle, the Read More

There are two different international treaties that are most important here. There is the Paris Convention, which was signed many, many years ago, over a hundred years ago. And what it says is that if you file a patent application in one member country and you file in the second member country within one year, Read More

So what maintenance fees are is that after a patent issues, there are three fees, four years after it issues, eight years after it issues, and 12 years after it issues. And the fees are increasingly higher. The idea of the fee is that if you’re not using it and making money on this and Read More

Trademarks and free speech intersect in a delicate balance where the rights of brand owners meet the freedoms of expressions. While trademarks protect the exclusive use of symbols, words, or designs to identify goods or services, they must coexist with the constitutional right to free speech. In other words, if I own a trademark, can Read More

Trademark bullying, a troubling trend in intellectual property occurs when a trademark owner asserts its rights beyond reasonable bounds, often targeting smaller entities with legal threats or actions. This misuse of trademark enforcement tactics can stifle competition, deter innovation, and hinder legitimate uses of marks. It disproportionately impacts startups. Small businesses and individuals who lack Read More