Before understanding the consequences of trademark infringement, it is helpful to understand the purpose of trademarks. The benefit of obtaining a trademark is that it grants an exclusive right to the owner of the trademark to use that mark in the marketplace. Having an exclusive right also grants a person the right to prevent others…
What does a copyright protect? Ideas may not be copyrighted, even if original. However, the expression of original ideas may be copyrighted. There are a number of consequences for infringing on another person’s copyright. Reason for Copyrights The purpose of copyrights is to incentivize individuals to create new works or new expressions of ideas. A…
Defenses to trademark infringement allegations include: the trademark is invalid, the trademark has been abandoned, or the mark is not distinctive. A registered trademark is invalid if the registration of the trademark or the incontestable right to use the trademark was obtained fraudulently. A trademark, whether registered or unregistered, is invalid if the mark has…
An allegation of copyright infringement is an allegation that someone owned a valid copyright in a creative work and someone else copied some or all of the copyrighted creative work. If a person has a copyright in a creative work, the person has the exclusive right to copy, sell, or otherwise reproduce that work. Anyone…
Trademarks are a valuable part of business today. Trademarks inform the world of the source of a product or service. We consider trademarks daily in our consumer needs. Scandals arise in the news about companies and then those companies expend great efforts to reestablish their reputations. This is because once their reputations are damaged, fewer…
Trademarks give notice of the source of a good or service. Marking goods or services is a way of putting your name on it. Often times, many related goods or services bear the same mark by the same company. Establishing a reputation linked to a mark is very important to businesses. A mark may be trademarked…
A person obtains a trademark when: 1) the mark is capable of being trademarked 2) the person is the first to use the mark in any market on a good or service. 3) A person maintains a trademark by continuous use. What Is There to Sell? A person does not have to register a trademark…
A trademark is a mark used to indicate the source of a good or service. The Benefits of Trademarks Most companies use similar marks on all their products to indicate the company name, among other things. If a company can establish a good reputation it will be likely that a person will consider using all…
Trademarks are a valuable part of a business. Trademarks indicate the source of a good or product. A company producing a reputable good or service, marked by a trademark, is likely to create a feeling of trust by consumers whenever consumers see that mark. The opposite is also true. Owners of reputable companies using trademarks…
Trademarks protect the originator of a particular mark from its use by others. Goods and services may be trademarked. Once something is trademarked, only the person with the trademarks may use that mark. Others may not. Additionally, others may not use a mark so similar to an existing trademark that the new mark could be…
A trademark does not have to be registered. A person acquires a trademark, and the right to prevent others from using that mark or a confusingly similar mark, by simply being the first to use the mark in the marketplace to indicate the source of origin of a good or service. Benefits of Trademark Registration…
Begin with Registration There are benefits to registering a trademark. Those benefits are largely obtaining a presumption that you own exclusive rights to that mark. In a lawsuit for trademark infringement, the holder of a registered trademark does not need to prove that the registered trademark is valid. The person challenging the validity must prove…
What is a Trademark? Trademarks are used to gain recognition by the public, or a subsection of the public, of a particular good or service when a person comes into contact with the trademark. A trademark is a word, name, symbol, device, or combination of these that indicates the source of a good or service….
Trademarks do not have to be registered in order to be valid. The person who uses a mark in commerce first obtains a trademark on that mark. This mark indicates where a good or service came from. It shows the source. The person who obtains a trademark on a mark also obtains the right to…
Every trademark attorney knows that a generic term cannot be trademarked. However, using a small exception to that rule, Best Buy registered a federal trademark in “best buy,” even though a court had previously ruled that “best buy” was generic. For a great summary of the situation, read Best Buy, Resurrected From the Trademark Graveyard?…
This article explains whether RSS feeds are copyrighted. In short, the answer is YES. What is RSS? Websites are normally accessed with a web browser. RSS is a technology that allows a webpage (blog, etc.) to be accessed without a web browser. RSS can be accessed by many tools, including an RSS reader, which is…
