When considering trademark protection, there is usually an expectation that the mark being considered is not generic enough to be viewed as something anyone can use. Making it impossible for companies to use generic words and phrases could really limit their ability...
If you're selling products on Amazon, you very well may see other sellers also moving the same products. Remember, Amazon started as a site for used books. While they've since expanded, it was initially a site for people to resell books, whether they were private...
Have you ever been listening to a song on the radio and thought that it sounded like a song you'd already heard? This is pretty common. You may think that one artist stole the idea or the music from the other. This topic gets a bit confusing, though, because the...
If you create something that others want, you'll always have someone trying to replicate your work. They'll do this in hopes that they too can make some financial proceeds. It's common for someone to infringe upon another person's intellectual property rights by...
Some of the more common types of intellectual property are patents, trademarks, trade secrets and copyrights. Many Californians invest a significant amount of time creating their artistic works, crafting a recognizable logo for their brand, designing a much-needed...
Remember the commercials about pirating music and movies? Remember when Napster got shut down? For many, pirating music seems like something that happened in the early 2000s, which many people did on dial-up internet and used services like LimeWire. This was long...
The main issue that crops up when someone infringes on a trademark is that they may use it to make sales. For instance, they could use the logo of a famous company to produce knock-off items and sell them for far less. Every sale that they make potentially takes a...
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) refers to intellectual property crimes as a "growing threat." They note that they devote a lot of resources to stopping it, but it's something that is happening more often and impacting more people. Why does the FBI look at it...
Trademark infringement often involves a mark being used without permission but not always. Sometimes, it just involves a very similar mark being used and harming the reputation of the first. This type of infringement can change the public's perception of the original...
Ask a business owner from 100 years ago what their number one asset was, and you would have probably been told it was their employees. That was true in a day when many people started and ended their working careers with the same company. These days, however, jobs come...
