Over the past summer Google+ has made a big deal about allowing select members to use vanity URLs. Google stated, “At first, we’re introducing custom URLs to a limited number of verified profiles and pages. But over time we plan to offer custom URLs to many more brands and individuals, so please stay tuned!” […]
I’ve filed an application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to register my trademark and I have received correspondence indicating that my registration of my applied for mark had been refused based upon a likelihood of confusion. What does this mean? One of the more popular rejections from the USPTO involves […]
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 […]
By Mark Warzecha I recently read an article in Rolling Stone with the title, “Jay-Z and Beyoncé lose bid to trademark Blue Ivy.” I thought this was interesting so I researched the US PTO. Contrary to the title of the article, Jay-Z and Beyoncé did not lose their bid trademark “Blue Ivy Carter.” […]
In the early 1990’s before the dot.com craze, a young entrepreneur named Ray Sozzi started his company Student Advantage. His company sold student advantage discount membership cards to the higher education market. In a stroke of genius or good fortune, he decided to secure several domain names for his business. One of the domain […]
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 […]
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 […]
By: Mark R. Malek In my last article, I noted that an inventor has a duty to disclose prior art that they know of when filing a patent application. But what is prior art? The answer to this question is extraordinarily important in determining not only patentability of an invention, but also in determining whether […]
By: J. Mason Williams IV I lost my civil case, now what? You decided to give it a go pro se, i.e. by yourself, but it didn’t work and now you have a final judgment against you. So what do you do? Well, under typical circumstances there are several possibilities in Florida. First, get in […]
