Protection of Intellectual Property: Protection of Legal Rights

Intellectual property, although intangible, can still be owned and your intellectual property rights must be protected. Modern business, especially since the rise of the Internet, has seen an increase in the creation of intellectual property. However, the Internet makes it even easier for someone to steal your ideas and work. An intellectual property attorney who is trained to help claim patent, trademark, copyright, and trade secret rights can help you protect your intellectual property.

Types of intellectual property include patents, trademarks and trade dress, copyrights, and trade secrets.

patents

The government grants a patent that allows a (generally) 20-year monopoly on an invention that was previously “not generally known.” Patents are intended to encourage investment in research and development. If you create a useful new process for making something, a machine, manufacturing, or even an improvement on something that already exists, you can patent your invention and prohibit others from “making, using, offering for sale, or selling… or importing” the invention. invention to the US Your right to patent your invention is a constitutional right (Article I, Section 8).
Patents are subdivided into three groups: design, utility and plant. Design patents protect innovations in the appearance (but not the structure or function) of an item. Utility patents are for completely new inventions, including machines, industrial processes, compositions of matter, and articles of manufacture. Plant patents cover innovations in plant life, such as new species of plants created from the propagation of cuttings and grafts of existing plants.

Patent attorneys will research previously issued patents to see if a similar product has already been patented or if you should apply for a patent on your invention. A patent attorney will also tell you if your idea is not patentable because it is a law of nature, a physical or an abstract phenomenon. You should seek out a patent or intellectual property attorney because in order to process a client’s patent application, he or she must be registered with the U.S. patent office. A patent attorney must also have passed a science and technology exam. engineering to better understand and serve customers.

Trademarks

Trademarks are granted for words, names, symbols, or devices that separate and distinguish businesses and services. These include arbitrary names like Kodak, suggestive names like Caterpillar (tractors), descriptive names that indicate the company’s products or services, and generic names that are descriptive. Generic names and some descriptive names cannot be protected, so consult a trademark or intellectual property attorney to see if your name qualifies for trademark rights.
You can also file an intent-to-use request to reserve a name that will later become a trademark. (This is especially important with the expansion of Internet businesses).

Trademark attorneys can also be sought to ensure that your new business is not using a trademark. The consequences of using a trademark, even if you have spent money and publicity promoting your business, include being sued for infringement.

Copyright

Copyright protects the individual expression of an idea, but does not protect the idea itself (see patent). Copyright is intended to promote scientific progress. You can copyright your writing, performance (music, dance), art, sound, compilations. You may not copyright uncompiled ideas or facts, words, or phrases (however, these may be registered as trademarks, so consult an intellectual property attorney). If you come up with an idea or invention while working for a company, it may be patented or copyrighted by the company you work for, but the copyrighted work belongs to you, the employee, not to the company that works for you. uses. However, there are loopholes, and an IP attorney will help you through the process of copyrighting your expression, but it will also save you trouble and time getting through the hurdles.

If you’re a business, you need an intellectual property attorney who specializes in copyright because, especially with internet businesses, you’ll need to make sure that, by contract, your website design can be copyrighted by your business and will not belong to the employee or independent contractor. who created it? This also applies to software.

trade secrets

It is important to protect the trade secrets of your business from being misappropriated. While patents have a limited coverage time and are released after 20 years, trade secrets are always protected. To qualify as a trade secret, it must have independent economic value to the company. For example, the Coca-Cola recipe is a trade secret, not a patent, and therefore will never be disclosed because without keeping the recipe secret, the company would not be able to compete by offering an individual product.