I am often asked do I need a trademark for my slogan? Can I patent my idea? How do I keep others from copying seminar materials that I have written? Well, here’s a primer for what all small business owners should know to protect their valuable intellectual property assets. First, you need to know what the […]
As a former trademark examining attorney for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and founder of The Trademark Company I am often asked for suggestions on how to select a great trademark by our start-up business customers. The response is always the same, “It depends on what you want out of your trademark.” There are two schools of […]
A U.S. federal trademark registration is your business’s most important asset. It’s how consumers in the marketplace identify your goods and services apart from those of your competitors. It’s also invaluable in stopping your competitors from adopting trademarks that are confusingly similar to yours. But the path to securing a U.S. federal trademark is often […]
Small businesses are the backbone of America. Often, however, small businesses struggle to find answers to critical questions about legal issues which can affect their ability to grow.We know what that is like. We were there once too. One of our fundamental tenets in founding The Trademark Company was to provide small businesses with access […]
I love McDonald’s. If I could I would eat there three meals a day, seven days a week, 365 days per year. McDonald’s has been with me throughout my life from when I was a kid of the seventies watching Ronald McDonald to when I moved to Washington D.C. in the early nineties. When I […]
In 2003 the United States signed the Madrid Protocol treaty permitting the holders of U.S. trademark applications and/or registrations to extend their U.S. trademark rights globally into over 80 countries around the world simply by filing requests to do so through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Although the treaty dramatically simplified the process of […]
Size matters in the computer industry, or at least that’s what we were once told. Computer hard drives once could be measured in megabytes. But as the size of programs and operating systems grew they moved to gigabytes. Soon we were told we would need to have storage measured in terabytes to accommodate the latest programs. But then […]
A few years ago we were approached by an online nutraceutical company to assist them in the enforcement of their trademarked product lines. The company came to us after a prolonged period of watching their monthly sales decline and finally suspecting that one of their competitors was somehow stealing some of their customers. More specifically, over […]
Did you know you can use your federally registered copyrights and trademarks to block the importation of infringing goods from entering the U.S.? In 2012 the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”) made 22,848 intellectual property rights seizures with a manufacturer’s suggested retail value of $1.26 billion. Could this be affecting your business? Most intellectual […]
Marketing Agencies have an incredibly difficult job. They are tasked with creating logos, slogans, and campaigns that will instantly grab the attention of the consumer, hold it, and allow them then to pitch their clients’ wares ultimately concluding in a sale or greater brand recognition. However, many marketers are unaware of the need to insure […]