Chapter 14 Business Law Terms

Trade secret

Information or a process that gives a business an advantage over competitors who do not know the information or process.

Federal Trademark Dilution Act

It allowed trademark owners to bring suits in federal court for trademark dilution.

Patentable

Novel, useful, and not obvious in light of current technology.

Intellectual property

Property resulting from intellectual, creative processes. Patents, trademarks, and copyrights are examples of _ _.

Generic terms

Refer to an entire class of products that receive no protection even if they acquire secondary meanings.

Lanham Act of 1946

Statutory protection of trademarks and related property is provided at the federal level by ___. It was enacted, in part, to protect manufacturers from losing business to rival companies that used confusingly similar trademarks.

automatic protection

Strong marks receive _ _ meaning because they serve to identify a particular product's source, as opposed to describing the product itself.

Trade name

A term that is used to indicate part or all of a business's name and that is directly related to the business's reputation and goodwill. _ _ are protected under the common law (and under trademark law, if the name is the same as the firm's trademark).

TRIPS agreement

Representatives from more than one hundred nations signed the __. It established, for the first time, standards for the international protection of intellectual property rights, including patents, trademarks, and copyrights for movies, computer programs, books, and music.

Strong marks

Fanciful, arbitrary, or suggestive trademarks.

95 years from the date of publication or 120 years from the date of creation.

For copyrights owned by publishing houses, the copyright expires after how long from the date of publication and how long from the date of creation?

20 years

How long does the government grant an inventor the exclusive right to make, use, or sell his or her invention?

14 years

How long for patents for designs?

License

In the context of intellectual property, a contract permitting the use of a trademark, copyright, patent, or trade secret for certain purposes. In the context of real property, a revocable right or privilege of a person to come on another person's land.

Injunction

The most commonly granted remedy for trademark infringement

Counterfeit goods

They copy or otherwise imitate trademarked goods, but they are not the genuine trademarked goods.

Suggestive trademarks

This mark indicates something about a Product's nature, quality or characteristics, without describing the product directly.

The Stop Counterfeiting in Manufactured Goods Act (SCMGA)

To combat counterfeit goods. It's a crime to traffic intentionally in or attempt to traffic in counterfeit goods or services, or to knowingly use a counterfeit mark on or in connection with goods or services.

Paris Convention 1883

To which about 173 countries are signatory, allows parties in one country to file for patent and trademark protection in any of the other member countries.

They are unusual or fancifully used.

Trade names are protected under the common law, but only if?

The U.S Patent and Trademark Office

Trademarks may be registered with the state or with the federal government. To register for protection under FEDERAL TRADEMARK LAW, a person must file an application with the _ _ _ in Washington, D.C.

True

True or False: Even a color can qualify for trademark protection, as did the color schemes used by some state university sports teams, including Ohio State University and Louisiana State University.

True

True or False: Even a single letter used in a particular style can be an arbitrary trademark.

True

True or False: Generally, a trade name is directly related to a business and its goodwill.

True

True or False: Generally, the TRIPS agreement forbids member nations from discrimination against foreign owners of intellectual property rights (in the administration, regulation, or adjudication of such rights).

True

True or False: The U.S cannot prosecute foreign counterfeiters because our national laws do not apply to them.

Trademark

A distinctive mark, motto, device, or implement that a manufacturer stamps, prints, or otherwise affixes to the goods it produces so that they may be identified on the market and their origins made known. Once a _ is established (under the common law or through registration), the owner is entitled to its exclusive use.

Patent

A government grant that gives an inventor the exclusive right or privilege to make, use, or sell his or her invention for a limited time period. The word _ usually refers to some invention and designates either the instrument by which patent rights are evidenced or the patent itself.

Collective mark

A mark used by members of a cooperative, association, or other organization to certify the region, materials, mode of manufacture, quality, or accuracy of the specific goods or services. Examples of _ _ include the labor union marks found on tags of certain products and the credits of movies, which indicate the various associations and organizations that participated in the making of the movies.

Certification mark

A mark used by one or more persons, other than the owner, to certify the region, materials, mode of manufacture, quality, or accuracy of the owner's goods or services. When used by members of a cooperative, association, or other organization, such a mark is referred to as a collective mark. Examples of _ _ include the "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval? and ?UL Tested."

Service mark

A mark used in the sale or the advertising of services, such as to distinguish the services of one person from the services of others. Titles, character names, and other distinctive features of radio and television programs may be registered as _ _.

Secondary meaning

Descriptive terms, geographic terms, and personal names are not inherently distinctive and do not receive protection until they acquire a _ _ .

Fanciful trademarks

Distinctive and include invented words.

Strong marks, Secondary Meaning, Generic Terms

Distinctiveness of the Mark

Berne Convention 1886

Every country that has signed the convention must recognize the U.S author's copyright in the book.

Books, records, films

Examples of copyrightable works? Give 3 examples

The First Sale Doctrine

The U.S Copyright Act provides that "the owner of a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under [the Copy Right Act] is entitled, without the authority of the copyright owner, to sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that copy or phonorecord". This rule is known as

Copyright

The exclusive right of authors to publish, print, or sell an intellectual production for a statutory period of time. A _ has the same monopolistic nature as a patent or trademark, but it differs in that it applies exclusively to works of art, literature, and other works of authorship, including computer programs.

America Invents Act

The first person to file an application for a patent on a product or process will receive patent protection.

Trade dress

The image and overall appearance of a product, for example, the distinctive decor, menu, layout, and style of service of a particular restaurant. Basically, _ _ is subject to the same protection as trademarks.

Madrid Protocol

Under _ _, an international treaty that has been signed by 86 countries in 2003, a company can register its trademark in more than one country with a single application.

1. Currently in commerce or 2. the applicant intends to put it into commerce within 6 months

Under the current law, a mark can be registered when?

Infringed

Used without authorization

When a trade name is also the name of the company's trademarked product

When can a trade name be protected as a trademark?

At the end

Where do collective marks appear of motion picture credits to indicate the various associations and organizations that participated in the making of the films?

Dilution

With respect to trademarks, a doctrine under which distinctive or famous trademarks are protected from certain unauthorized uses of the marks regardless of a showing of competition or a likelihood of confusion. Congress created a federal cause of action for _ in 1995 with the passage of the Federal Trademark Dilution Act.

For the life of the author plus 70 years

Works created after Jan 1, 1978, are automatically given statutory copyright protection for how long?

Similar Mark

_ _ is more likely to lessen the value of a famous mark when the companies using the marks provide related goods or compete against each other in the same market.