One of the biggest gripes I had with attending college had to be buying textbooks. Ten years ago when I was in college, textbooks cost around $500 per semester. This was an outrageous cost. Yet, college kids were forced to pay for these books in order to follow along with the teacher’s syllabus. You would […]
In an earlier post, I discussed copyright infringement risks inherent to web sites that facilitate exchange of user-generated content (UGC). As the Internet’s popularity took off in the 1990s, governments of the world recognized the need to reconcile traditional copyright laws with the unique challenges of the information age, including UGC. In 1998, the Digital Millennium Copyright […]
What is a company trademark? “A trademark is any name, symbol, figure, letter, word, or mark adopted and used by a manufacturer or merchant in order to designate his or her goods and to distinguish them from those manufactured or sold by others.” – defined by dictionary.com. There are many different types of distinctive marks […]
From content sharing to crowdsourcing, web sites that facilitate exchange of user-generated content (UGC) are key components in what makes the web … the web! But of concern for website providers, promotions operators, sponsors, and others that permit third parties to post UGC is the possibility that the user will infringe third-party intellectual property or personal rights.
By Daniel Davidson This election day, Tactical IP would like to share with you that intellectual property even extends its arms into the voting process. Without intellectual property (maybe a little less “intellectual” property in the 2000 election with the hanging chads) the election process would not be where it is today. Below are a few different […]
In today’s web 2.0 world, it is even harder for companies to protect their trademarks. With more and more people interacting on these social media sites, we see more cases of trademark infringement. Many times the infringers are not even aware that what they are doing is illegal. For example, fans of a product or […]
In 1955, a 65 year old man wearing a white suit to match his white hair and goatee took $105 out his social security to start franchising his fried chicken recipe. Less than ten years later, he had 600 franchisee restaurants selling his famous Kentucky Fried Chicken. This man was the legendary Colonel Harland Sanders. […]
By: Dan Pierron Receiving a notice of allowance is the patent equivalence of reaching the promised land. After years of effort and expense, the Patent Office has deemed your application worthy of becoming a patent, and issued a Notice of Allowance accordingly. However, this does not necessarily mean the end of the road as far as […]
By: Mark R. Malek The first article I posted about this series was directed to the duty to disclose prior art to the Patent Office during the patent prosecution process. The next article tried to give some information about what constituted prior art. Now that we know what prior art is, let’s go over some good […]
