Business Law Chapter 8: Intellectual Property Rights

License

An agreement, or contract, permitting the use of a trademark, copyright, patent, or trade secret for certain purposes. The party that owns the intellectual property rights and issues the license is the licensor, and the party obtaining the license is the licensee.

Patents for designs

fourteen years

Certification marks

used by one or more persons, other than the owner, to certify the region, materials, mode of manufacture, quality, or other characteristic of specific goods or services. Certification marks include "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval" and "UL Tested"

Collective Mark

When used by members of a cooperative, association, or other organization, a certification mark is referred to as a collective mark. Collective marks appear at the ends of movie credits to indicate the various associations and organizations that participated in the making of the films.

Trademark

a distinctive mark, motto, device, or implement that a manufacturer stamps, prints, or otherwise affixes to the goods it produces so that they can be identified on the market and their origins made known. In other words, a trademark is a source indicator.

The most commonly granted remedy for trademark infringement

an injunction to prevent further infringement

Secondary Meaning

Descriptive terms, geographic terms, and personal names are not inherently distinctive and do not receive protection under the law until they acquire a secondary meaning. A secondary meaning may arise when customers begin to associate a specific term or phrase (such as London Fog) with specific trademarked items (coats with "London Fog" labels) made by a particular company

Generic terms

Generic terms that refer to an entire class of products, such as bicycle and computer, receive no protection, even if they acquire secondary meanings. A trademark, however, can acquire generic use. (for example, aspirin and thermos)

Trade secret

Information of commercial value, such as customer lists, plans, and research and development

Trade dress

Refers to the image and overall appearance of a product. Trade dress is a broad concept and can include either all or part of the total image or overall impression created by a product or its packaging. Basically, trade dress is subject to the same protection as trademarks. In cases involving trade dress infringement, as in trademark infringement cases, a major consideration is whether consumers are likely to be confused by the allegedly infringing use.

Patentable

To be patentable, the applicant must prove that the invention, discovery, process, or design is 1. Novel 2. Useful 3. Not obvious (in light of current technology)

Trade name

Trademarks apply to products. A trade name indicates part or all of a business's name, whether the business is a sole proprietorship, a partnership, or a corporation. Generally, a trade name is directly related to a business and its goodwill. A trade name may be protected as a trademark if the trade name is also the name of the company's trademarked product—for example, Coca-Cola. Unless it is also used used as a trademark or service mark, a trade name cannot be registered with the federal government.

Copyright

intangible property rights granted by federal statute to the author or originator of a literary or artistic production of a specified type.

Patents for inventions

twenty years

Patent

A grant from the government that gives an inventor the exclusive right to make, use, or sell his or her invention for a period of twenty years. Patents for designs, as opposed to those for inventions, are given for a fourteen-year period.

Intellectual Property

Any property that results from intellectual, creative processes—that is to say, the products of an individual's mind

Lanham Act of 1946

Statutory protection of trademarks and related property is provided at the federal level by the Lanham Act of 1946. The Lanham Act was enacted, in part, to protect manufacturers from losing business to rival companies that used confusingly similar trademarks.

SCMGA

Stop Counterfeiting in Manufactured Goods Act was enacted to combat counterfeit goods. The act makes it 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

Trademark dilution

Under the TDRA (Trademark Dilution Revision Act) to state a claim for trademark dilution, a plaintiff must prove the following: 1. The plaintiff owns a famous mark that is distinctive 2. The defendant has begun using a mark in commerce that allegedly is diluting the famous mark 3. The similarity between the defendant's mark and the famous mark gives rise to an association between the marks 4. The association is likely to impair the distinctiveness of the famous mark or harm its reputation A famous mark may be diluted by the use of an identical mark or by the use of a similar mark.

Service mark

essentially a trademark that is used to distinguish the services (rather than the products) of one person or company from those of another. For examples, airlines. Titles and character names used in radio and television are frequently registered as service marks.