Ch. 5 Business Law

Trademark

A distinctive word, symbol or design that identifies the manufacturer as the source of particular goods and distinguishes its products from those made or sold by others. -Protected at federal level.

Trade Secrets

A formula, device, idea, process, or other information used in a business that gives the owner a competitive advantage in the marketplace. -Customer lists, plans, research and development, pricing information, marketing techniques, and production methods. -Anything making an individual company unique. -Extend to ideas and their expressions within a business.

Collective Mark

A mark used my members of a cooperative, association, union or other organization to certify theregions, materials, mode of manufacture, quality, or other characteristics of specific goods or services. -Appears at the end of a movie, the credits, gives credit to participation in production of a product/service.

Trade Names

A name that a business uses to identify itself and its brands. A trade name is directly related to a businesses reputation and goodwill and is protected under trademark law. -Protected under the federal government only if they are also used as a trademark for the company. -Trade name must be the same as the trademarked product. -Words must be unusual and fanciful for trademark protection

Distributed Network

A network used by persons located in different places to share computer files.

Fair Use Exception

A person or organization can reproduce copyrighted material without paying royalties if purposes are such as criticism, comment, news, teaching, research or scholarship. -big concern in fair use is weather it has any effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of copyrighted work.

Patents

A property right granted by the federal government that gives an inventor an exclusive right to make, use, sell or offer to sell an invention in the U.S.A. for a limited time. -First person to file is granted patent protection. -Period of patent protection begins the day that application is filed rather than when the patent is issued.

Service Mark

A trademark that is used to distinguish the services rather than the products of one person or company from those of another. IE airline marks associated with their company or title and character names used in radio.

License

An agreement by the owner of intellectual property to permit another to use a trademark, copyright, patent, or trade secret for limited amount of time.

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. -arises when people associate a specific term or phrase with specific items. -Although it takes most of the publics knowledge of the product and its attributes for second meaning to fall under trademark protection.

Berne Convention

International Copyright agreement. -Every country that has signed must follow.

TRIPS Agreement

International protection for intellectual property rights, patents, trademarks, copyrights for movies, computer programs, books and music. -Must in domestic law list regulations and property rights.

Madrid Protocol

International treaty between countries who signed, gives U.S. companies wishing to register its trademark abroad can submit a single application, reduces costs of application fees etc.

Distinctiveness of Mark

Only trademarks that are deemed sufficiently distinctive from others are protected. Arbitrary, suggestive and fanciful trademarks are the strongest. -Arbitrary trademark could be dairy queen or dutch boy. -Other strong trademarks include anything with an invented name.

Intellectual Property

Property resulting from intellectual and creative processes. -info contained in books and computer files.

Copyright Infringement

Reproduction does not have to be the same as original or reproduced it in its entirety.

Generic Terms

Terms that at one time were trademark protected such as trampoline get so used and known by the public that they became generic names for specific things such as aspirin etc.

Cybersquatting

The act of registering a domain name that is the same as the trademark of another and then offering to sell that domain name back to the trademark owner.

Copyrights

The exclusive right of an author or originator of a literary or artistic production to publish, print, sell, or otherwise use that production for a statutory period of time. -Automatically given protection upon creation. -can be registered with U.S. copyright office. What is copyrightable is the particular way in which an idea is expressed. -but inseparable ideas and expressions cannot be copyrighted. -Can also cover the collection of facts as long as they are collected and stored in some sort of original way that has not been already used/taken.

Trade Dress

The image and overall appearance of a product that is protected by trademark law. -can include all or part of the total image or overall impression created by a product or its packaging. -Subject to same protection as trademarks.

Patent Infringement

can occur unintentionally, even if patented product is not in commerce, and even if all features or parts of an invention are copied.

Domain Name

part of an internet address such as cengage.com. The part to the right of the period is the top level domain ad indicates the type of entity that operates the site, and the part to the left of the period called second level domain is chosen by the entity.

Trademark Dilution

protect distinctive or famous trademarks from unauthorized uses even when the use is on non competing goods or is unlikely to confuse.

Peer-to-Peer Networking

sharing of resources among multiple computers.

Cyber Mark

Trademark in cyberspace.

Suggestive Trademarks

Trademarks with names that bring to mind something about a product.

Certification Mark

Used by one or more persons, other than the owner to certify the regions, materials, mode of manufacture, quality, or other characteristics of specific goods or services. -Seal of approvals or seal of quality

Trademark Infringement

Whenever someone else uses that trademark in its entirety or copies it to a substantial degree either intentionally or unintentionally, the trademark has been infringed. -must create a likelihood for confusion. -trademark does not have to be registered.

What is Patentable

Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture or composition of matter or any new and useful improvement may obtain a patent.

Cloud Computing

a web based service that extends a computers software or storage capabilities by allowing users to remotely access excess storage and computing capacity as needed.

Trademark Registration

To register for protection under federal trademark law, a person must file with the U.S. patent and trademark office. -mark can be registered if it is currently in commerce or if the applicant intends to put the trademark to use in 6 months. -trademark is protected the day somebody files but it is not registered till it is put into commerce.