By: Mark R. Malek You may recall that my last article was directed to the requirement to pay maintenance fees in order to keep your patent alive. As was discussed in that article, maintenance fees must be paid at 3.5 years, 7.5 years and 11.5 years after the patent has issued. When someone has not paid […]
By: Mark R. Malek If you haven’t noticed, many of my posts lately have revolved around the questions that I get from various clients. This one was a tough one. Not necessarily from the perspective of not knowing what to do, but having to hear the horror story from this client. Unfortunately, it is a […]
By: Mark R. Malek So you have just received your Notice of Allowance for your patent application. In the Notice of Allowance, there is a requirement for you to pay an issue fee and a publication fee. You may have paid the publication fee early pursuant to a request for early publication. Section 1129 of […]
When does fighting to protect a trademark borderline on trademark bullying? Trademarks are established to protect an individual’s, a corporation’s, or non-profit organization’s creative work. What happens when the trademark owner takes protecting their trademark too far as to be deemed as domineering? The best examples of crossing the line can be witnessed with non-profit […]
Entrepreneurs who are starting up their own businesses should be careful in protecting their IP inventions from former employees. They should not take for granted that the IP work they create off company hours is theirs to keep. Employers may be able to stake a claim in ownership. Here are five ways employers can claim […]
You started your company four years ago and everything is going well when all of a sudden you are handed a cease and desist letter. The letter informs you that you are using another company’s trademark – their company name. What are you to do? With the world increasingly getting smaller thanks to the internet, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 or […]
