Copyright Application Forms: A Step-By-Step Guide 2023
Trademark Oppositions and Cancellations are very serious matters indeed whose procedural dictates must be followed to the letter. Here’s What you Need to Know
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Trademark Oppositions and Cancellations are very serious matters indeed whose procedural dictates must be followed to the letter. Here’s What you Need to Know
Trademark Oppositions and Cancellations are very serious matters indeed whose procedural dictates must be followed to the letter. Here’s What you Need to Know
Trademark Oppositions and Cancellations are very serious matters indeed whose procedural dictates must be followed to the letter. Here’s What you Need to Know
Trademark Oppositions and Cancellations are very serious matters indeed whose procedural dictates must be followed to the letter. Here’s What you Need to Know
Use in Commerce is defined in Section 45 of the Trademark Act as a “Bona Fide Use of a trademark in the ordinary course of trade.” What is “Bona Fide Use”? Keep Reading to Find Out
Use in Commerce is defined in Section 45 of the Trademark Act as a “Bona Fide Use of a trademark in the ordinary course of trade.” What is “Bona Fide Use”? Keep Reading to Find Out
Use in Commerce is defined in Section 45 of the Trademark Act as a “Bona Fide Use of a trademark in the ordinary course of trade.” What is “Bona Fide Use”? Keep Reading to Find Out
Use in Commerce is defined in Section 45 of the Trademark Act as a “Bona Fide Use of a trademark in the ordinary course of trade.” What is “Bona Fide Use”? Keep Reading to Find Out
Use in Commerce is defined in Section 45 of the Trademark Act as a “Bona Fide Use of a trademark in the ordinary course of trade.” What is “Bona Fide Use”? Keep Reading to Find Out
Use in Commerce is defined in Section 45 of the Trademark Act as a “Bona Fide Use of a trademark in the ordinary course of trade.” What is “Bona Fide Use”? Keep Reading to Find Out
Use in Commerce is defined in Section 45 of the Trademark Act as a “Bona Fide Use of a trademark in the ordinary course of trade.” What is “Bona Fide Use”? Keep Reading to Find Out
A Step-by-Step Guide to filing a Canadian Trademark Application with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO), from beginning to end. Our trademark attorneys are here to help.
Universal trademark symbols that don’t serve as source identifiers are not eligible for trademark registration. Speak with a trademark attorney to determine if your trademark is eligible for TM protection
The Likelihood of Confusion Factors which determine Trademark Infringement is based on the Dupont Factors. Speak to one of our Trademark Lawyers to learn more.
The cost to register a trademark is determined by the Gov. filing fees ($275/CL or $225/CL) and the Service fee to manage, search, draft and file the trademark application
Trademark Oppositions and Cancellations are very serious matters indeed whose procedural dictates must be followed to the letter. Here’s What you Need to Know
Copyright law covers “original works of authorship” – If someone has stolen or reproduced your work without your permission, sending a cease and desist letter is the first step
Trademark Opposition Process: A Complete Procedural Guide to the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB Oppositions) written by trademark attorneys.
A complete guide to Trademark Counterfeiting. This article covers how to identify it and what you can do about it.
A complete guide to Trademark Counterfeiting. This article covers how to identify it and what you can do about it.
Trademark Letters of Protest are an Opposer’s first chance to block the registration of a New Trademark Application. Here’s Everything You need to Know.
If you suspect that someone is Cybersquatting on your Domain Name, File a UDRP Complaint and have the Domain Name transferred to you.
If you suspect that someone is Cybersquatting on your Domain Name, File a UDRP Complaint and have the Domain Name transferred to you.
If you suspect that someone is Cybersquatting on your Domain Name, File a UDRP Complaint and have the Domain Name transferred to you.
Do I Need an Attorney to File a Trademark Application in the US? Well, Maybe. If you are a foreign applicant you are required an attorney by law. If you are a US Citizen, your life will be much easier with the help of a trademark lawyer.
The cost to register a trademark is determined by the Gov. filing fees ($275/CL or $225/CL) and the Service fee to manage, search, draft and file the trademark application
The cost to register a trademark is determined by the Gov. filing fees ($275/CL or $225/CL) and the Service fee to manage, search, draft and file the trademark application
The Supplemental Register is a second-tier, Trademark Register, for trademarks that are rejected from the Principal Register due to Merely Descriptive issues.
The three symbols that are most commonly associated with trademarks: Circle R (®), TM, and SM. Depending on the goods/services sold and the status of the trademark application with the USPTO, one or more of these marks may be appropriate.
Logos are artistic illustrations that are presented in either color or black/white form. If a trademark applicant wants to trademark the color of a logo, the application must reflect the designated colors.
The USPTO has instituted a series of new rules, designed to make the trademark application process more expedient and uniform. These rules officially took effect in February of 2020.
If part of a trademark is distinct but a different part is descriptive/generic, the applicant will need to provide a “Disclaimer” on the non-distinct aspect of the mark.
Geographic trademarks may or may not be permissible depending on a number of considerations. This article will delve a bit deeper into the legal framework of Geographic Trademarks and when/how they may be permissible.
A trademark can last forever, as long as the mark is used in commerce but if a trademark holder no longer uses the trademark, or fails to enforce his/her trademark rights, he may lose his trademark rights.
The total time for a Trademark Application to be processed, from beginning to end, should hopefully not take more than a year. BUT trademark rights are retroactive to the date of the filing. File as soon as possible!
Fundamentally, Dividing a trademark application removes, but does not eliminate, the designated portion of the application and assigns it to an entirely new trademark application.
A Descriptive Trademark describes the purpose or function of the goods/services sold under the trademark and is ineligible protection on the Principal Register
Trade Dress contemplates the general appearance of a product including not only the design of the product but also its packaging. Color, texture, shape, scent, or even flavor can all be components of trade dress.
Interested in how Common Law trademark rights are evolving in the age of the internet? Keep reading to find out.
Interested in how Common Law trademark rights are evolving in the age of the internet? Keep reading to find out.
Interested in how Common Law trademark rights are evolving in the age of the internet? Keep reading to find out.
US Trademark Applications Based on Foreign Trademark Applications or Registrations. Here’s Everything You Need to Know.
Use in Commerce is defined in Section 45 of the Trademark Act as a “Bona Fide Use of a trademark in the ordinary course of trade.” What is “Bona Fide Use”? Keep Reading to Find Out
If your Trademark application has been rejected by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office due to an existing trademark, you may consider filing a petition for cancellation of the cited trademark
To qualify for trademark protection, the acronym, abbreviations or initials must not be descriptive and consumers must not be able to recognize them as synonymous with a particular product.
When two different trademarks are identical – or even similar – the owners of the trademarks may enter into a co-existence agreement. Here’s What You Need to Know
Five statutory bases are available to an Applicant when filing a trademark application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Establishing Bona Fide Intent to Use the trademark commercially and to link the trademark with particular goods and services is one statutory basis that may be satisfied for a trademark application to be submitted.
Trademark applications fundamentally allow an applicant to apply for one of two types of “Trademarks” (although sound/motion marks are also available); A standard character, or a word trademark and a special format trademark, or what is commonly referred to as a Design trademark.
A successful trademark application must fulfill the statutory requirements for at least one of the five bases for a trademark to be granted by the Unites States Patent & Trademark Office. Many trademark applicants choose to file a Trademark Electronic Application System Plus (TEAS) application since the filing fee is reduced to just $275.00 per International Classification. In addition to paying the filing fee, the application must satisfy the bases requirements in effect at the time of filing.
Trademark Cease and Desist letters elicit wildly different mental and emotional reactions, depending on whether you are on the sending or receiving end of these letters. The fundamental purpose of a cease and desist letter, of course, is to allow a holder of a trademark to notify an alleged violator that there is indeed trademark infringement underway, and stipulate the trademark holder’s demands and threats if those demands are not met.
Perhaps one of the most common questions our trademark attorneys are asked is whether or not I can use my name as a trademark. This is of course not particularly surprising – entrepreneurs and small business owners very often want to brand their businesses with their own names to make the company feel more personal and in a certain way, intimate.
That your trademark has gone abandoned is not necessarily a fatal conclusion and the USPTO provides its applicants an opportunity to revive an abandoned trademark under certain circumstances. Like all dealings with the USPTO, form matters and there are specific procedural rules and requirements that must be met when filing a petition to revive.
A trademark opposition proceeding can be commenced by anyone with a legitimate interest in the registration of a pending trademark. A trademark opposition lawyer can help.
Trademark litigation can be immensely costly and resource-consuming so it is critical to first evaluate the scope of the case and attempt to at least make an educated guess as to the chances of success.
Perhaps most importantly, it is critical to recognize the immense time, money and resources involved in prosecuting a trademark opposition case and one should, therefore, be very careful to make an honest assessment of the likelihood of winning before commencing suit.
After five long years, your food startup has done everything your doubters arrogantly predicted it wouldn’t do. It is now a multi-million dollar success story and over 10,000 stores throughout the United States sell your trademarked product, Volcano Bites, a fruit snack containing 100% real orange and pineapple juice with no artificial additives.
Trademark Oppositions are an immensely powerful tool. If you feel that your trademark has been infringed upon by a competing party, and you catch the newly filed trademark in time, a Trademark Opposition proceeding may be your new best friend. If you are on the receiving end of a Trademark Opposition, it’s time to hire a Trademark Attorney. Trademark Opposition and You: What it Means, and What to Do You’ve taken significant steps to…
Arguably the most daunting, difficult and downright terrifying task for any startup is raising capital. Obtaining seed funding can often be a long and frustrating process but it is imperative. Having trouble raising seed capital? Want to know how to close a deal with an investor? Read on and speak with a New York Seed Round Lawyer. What is Seed Funding? Seed funding is arguably THE most important round of funding for any startup.…
If you operate a submission-based website where content is uploaded by third-party users without your initial vetting and approval, you should be very interested indeed in the DMCA Safe Harbors. What is a DMCA Safe Harbor? The Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998 (the “DMCA”) is a law which was passed in 1998 and was written with the express purpose of developing a legal framework to manage the competing interests of protecting copyright holders while…
This blog post was written by Abe Cohn and Originally Appeared on the PieShell Blog The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is charged with a variety of duties, and chief among them is its responsibility to develop and enforce food-labeling regulations for food products. The two main pieces of legislation governing these regulations are The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act) and the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act. Each Act covers, of course, different areas of governance but…
This blog post was written by Abe Cohn and Originally Appeared on Entrepreneurial Chef Magazine While you absolutely loved fruit roll ups as a child, your adult sensibilities now recognize that a healthier version would have probably served your body better and you’ve since made it your life’s mission to build an organic taffy company. Congratulations! Of course, you have a lot of work ahead of you but you recognize that the most important aspect…
CoverWallet was started by tech entrepreneurs who worked in software startups in the past, building easy to use online products for consumers and enterprises. Frustrated with how opaque, high pressure and time consuming the management of commercial insurance was, we decided to build a better experience for other business owners and a concierge service for them. 1. What’s your name and position at CoverWallet? A. Inaki Berenguer, CEO & CO-founder of Coverwallet 2.…
Music producers generally elicit and capture artists’ performances in the recording studio to produce artistically, commercially, and technically acceptable master recordings. Often times, the artist-producer relationship is laid back and casual due to the nature of the music industry and the people therein. Some artists and producers avoid explicitly discussing the details of their relationship as it can negatively influence the workflow and creative atmosphere when there is too much business and money talk. Nevertheless,…
When someone “steals” your song, it is most often a matter of copyright infringement. Copyright owners have federal statutory rights as outlined by the United States Copyright Act. In short, copyright owners have exclusive rights in their copyrighted works including the right of reproduction, distribution, public display and performance, and the right to prepare derivative works. This means only the copyright owner, such as a musician or artist, can reproduce, distribute or perform their original…
Have you ever been to a musical performance and thought to yourself, “What a fun job! I wish I could play rock guitar for a living.” Did you make music with your high school buddies in your garage or your basement? Did you or your friends’ bands eventually fall apart? While some bands come and go, others grow to become professional musicians and legendary icons, selling thousands of dollars in branded merchandise, protecting and licensing…
With the growing popularity of hip-hop music and remix culture, sampling has become common practice among a wide variety of artists and producers looking to associate with those who have come before them. Sampling is the act of integrating sounds embodied in a pre-existing sound recording into a new musical work. As a matter of copyright law, when an artist “samples” another artist’s music, they must receive permission from the copyright owner of the sampled…
But really, how to value your Startup? Imagine a situation in which an investor says that he’ll give you $30 million for 20 percent of your company. However, you believe your startup to be currently valued at less than $150 million. What is the investor really offering you? Pre and Post Money Valuation Investors commonly speak in terms of post-money valuation, which refers to the value of the company after a financing event. When…
Term sheets are documents (often) drafted by attorneys, which contain the key provisions that startups and investors agree to when striking a deal. Fundamentally, term sheets stipulate the financial obligations of each party and outline the conditions of the sale of stock to investors or the sale and purchase of a company. Critically, term sheets allow the parties to identify or predict any issues that may arise before the (potentially) wasteful commitment of time, money,…
Stock options, such as the Incentive Stock Option (ISO) and the Non-Qualified Stock Option (NSO), are an important tool to incentivize employees, contractors, and consultants hired by a startup to work at their top capacity. These stock options provide workers with the right and opportunity to purchase shares in the future at the (theoretically) lower price that is set at the moment the stock is granted. Of course, the assumption here is that the company’s…
The Basics When an individual is granted stock as compensation from his/her employer, the taxes may either be received fully at the time of grant or may be received incrementally along a vesting schedule. Naturally, the IRS considers this stock to be a form of financial gain that is subject to taxation. Under this default assumption, an individual pays taxes based on the value of stock at the time of vesting. However, under the…
17 U.S.C. 1201, the “anti-circumvention” provision of the Copyright Act, makes it illegal for a user of a “digital good” to access certain copyrighted information, like a computer program’s code, if the code is so written to disallow access to it. For example, if a user purchases a new smartphone that implements a measure to block access to its operating system’s code, and the user “circumvents” that measure to see the code, that user has…
Yaina Williams had an idea for a reality TV show, called “Married At 1st Sight,” where 3 different, random couples go on a 12-hour blind date, after which the TV audience selects a winning couple who then marry one another. The goal is for the couple to remain together for at least 6 months in order to win prizes at the end of it all. Williams uploaded her “Treatment” to TV Writer’s Vault, a website…
Google, the often-verbed champion of the search engine, faced a lawsuit from the Author’s Guild in 2013 over Google Books’s “Library Project.” Since 2004, Google has worked with several libraries to create something of an online card catalog that, as Google proclaims, aims to make finding relevant books easier for those looking for them – “specifically, books they wouldn’t find any other way such as those that are out of print.” Naturally, this ain’t grandma’s…
Andrew Greene, an ex-director and head of corporate finance at Stratton Oakmont, Inc., the subject of the 2013 hit Martin Scorsese film The Wolf of Wall Street, brought suit against Paramount Pictures and others last year alleging defamation and violations of his right to privacy under the laws of New York. Greene claims that the character Nicky “Rugrat” Koskoff is an identifiable portrayal of him, and that people who have watched the movie believe that…
Early this summer it was rumored that Universal Music Group and Sony Music were preparing to file lawsuits against SoundCloud, the popular Swedish music-streaming service (based in Berlin) that over the past eight years has helped tons of budding musicians advance their careers. SoundCloud only streams user-uploaded music, which in large part is made up of original compositions from smaller artists. The problem is that a lot of these artists are DJs who use non-original,…
Back in 2007, proud mother Stephanie Lenz recorded a video of her young son happily bouncing about to Prince’s song, “Let’s Go Crazy.” The video is only 29 seconds long, but received a gigantic amount of attention when Lenz went to court over it. Universal Music Publishing Group complained to YouTube that the video infringed a copyright that Universal owns, and demanded that the video to be taken down. YouTube complied, and Lenz fought back.…
On the first of September, at the request of rights holders representing Norwegian branches of United States media companies, a district court in Oslo, Norway ordered Norwegian internet service providers to block access to large file sharing websites such as The Pirate Bay. The injunctions will last for five years, and will apply to any new domain names that the companies may move to. If this story sounds old, that’s probably because these file sharing…
Two United States Courts of Appeals, the Fourth Circuit and the Federal Circuit, are set to examine the question of whether or not Section 2(a) of the United States Trademark Act, otherwise known as the “Lanham Act,” is in violation of the First Amendment and, therefore, unconstitutional. The section provides that the USPTO can deny or cancel a trademark on the Principal Register if it consists of “immoral, deceptive, or scandalous matter, or which may…
Two companies, Kelly Services, Inc. (hereinafter referred to as “Kelly”) and Creative Harbor LLC, created employment-related apps that are not entirely similar, but would operate in the same general market. Unfortunately, both companies titled their respective apps as “WorkWire.” Kelly, who had not filed “WorkWire” for trademark protection, tried to submit WorkWire to the Apple App Store, failed, tried again, and succeeded. Two hours before the App Store released WorkWire for public purchase, however, Creative…
Sparks Networks (owner of JDate) has suffered some significant losses in the last few years, but it’s difficult to point the finger at companies like JSwipe when Sparks simply hasn’t kept up with the times. Unsurprisingly, most people would rather not pay for online dating services when there are so many that are free to use. JDate could have ventured into the world of ad-based revenue with a free app, and, prior to 2014, they…
Sparks Networks, owner of JDate.com, isn’t just suing JSwipe over a trademark or the letter “J.” There is a controversial and familiar patent issue in the midst as well. Back in 2011, Sparks sued Zoosk, OkCupid, and 2RedBeans (a dating website for Chinese-Americans) for infringement of the same patent at issue here. None of the 2011 cases went to final judgment, which presumably means that they all settled, bolstering the views of those who see…
JDate’s lawsuit against JSwipe has created a massive buzz in the world of internet news. The consensus among commentators is that Sparks Networks, the owner of JDate, is claiming an exclusive right to use the letter “J” in reference to services targeting the Jewish community. Consensus is not always completely correct, however. Among Sparks’ 8 allegations against JSwipe is “False Designation of Origin,” which is when somebody uses a company name that is likely to…
JSwipe, the increasingly popular tinder-like app for the Jewish community, has attracted over 375,000 users since its launch last April. Unfortunately, a quick rise to the top is often welcomed with a lawsuit. Sparks Networks, Inc., owner of the well known online dating service JDate, filed a complaint against JSwipe in November alleging (among other things) trademark and patent infringement. The case is still in its early stages, and is set to resume this month.…
“Smart contracts” are digitized, self-executing agreements that may reduce or, eventually, eliminate the need for courts to enforce certain agreements. Now in the early stages of development, the idea has been around since 1994. Two start-ups, Codius and Ethereum, are working on systems that aim to make smart contracts a reality. Smart contracts are more than a standard “auto-pay” function. Through the use of cryptocurrency, or decentralized currency, Codius and Ethereum seek to significantly lower…