It’s a sad but all too common story: a local small business owner who failed to go through the trademark registration process receives a cease and desist letter from an out-of-state company they’ve never heard of demanding that they immediately stop using a trademarked word/logo or face an expensive federal lawsuit. Could you be next? Continue Reading…
If you are anything like me, odds are that you turn to Google several times a day to fact check anything and everything.
Similarly, we turn to the all-knowing Internet to research products and services before we buy. Recent statistics indicate that almost five billion (that’s a whopping nine zeroes) Google searches are executed per DAY — an incredible stat, but what does this have to do with my business? And how can trademarks dramatically improve my SEO? Continue Reading…
Stop. Don’t spend any more time and money developing business name ideas or even building your existing company until you have deeply considered whether your brand is trademarkable.
Naming your business is a real challenge. And even if you think you struck gold with a catchy name and an available .com, your work has only just begun.
Many catchy names are simply not protectable under trademark law and, worse yet, your beloved name may be infringing someone else’s existing trademark. Unless you are comfortable with the risk of your business launch being met with a federal trademark infringement lawsuit, you have to do your due diligence now to evaluate the viability of your business name under trademark law.
Above all else, the best brand name strategy is Continue Reading…
So central is the idea of the freedom of speech, that the Bill of Rights places it first and foremost as the primary tenet of a democratic republic. Specifically, “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press[.]” Further, this potent protection providing freedom of speech presumptively applies to all forms of artistic expression: words, images, sounds, movements and more. In an era where anyone with an Internet connection and a thought can be a writer/publisher, the importance of such a right has perhaps never felt more real to “We the people.”
In addition to this freedom, the U.S. Constitution provides a means of incentivising our creative authorship by protecting it for a limited time from misappropriation. Specifically, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8 of the U.S. Constitution, affectionately known as the Copyright Clause, reads: “Congress shall have Power to…[secure] for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries…[.]” By granting authors the right to prevent infringers from profiting off of unauthorized copies of their works, Congress provided a means by which creators of copyrightable content could make a living through the ability to monopolize their content for a set period of time.
Therein lies the contradiction. Continue Reading…
