“Intellectual Property (IP) 101”

IP includes patents, trademarks, and copyrights. A patent provides an exclusive right to an invention. A trademark provides an exclusive right to an indication of source of a product. A copyright provides an exclusive right to an original work. A service mark provides an exclusive right to a service or origin of a service.

United States copyrights accrue automatically, but a work must be registered with the United States Copyright Office to perfect the federal copyright. Trademark rights can also accrue without a federal registration, but those rights are weaker, and a federal registration is preferred in almost all situations.

You take a picture of a city street. Look closely and you’ll see copyrighted material everywhere in your photo. The obvious copyrights are on the billboard, the newspaper stand and products in the store window. The less obvious copyrights are in the sculptural ornamentation of the lamppost, the patterned fabric of a woman’s skirt and the toy the kid is holding. You will never be able to track down all of these copyright owners to get their permission to use the photo. Are you out of luck if you want to use it commercially? Maybe not.

The term “intellectual property” denotes the specific legal rights which authors, inventors and other property holders may hold and exercise, and not the intellectual work itself. The laws confer a bundle of exclusive rights in relation to the particular form or manner in which ideas or information are expressed or manifested, and not in relation to the ideas or concepts themselves.

They are designed to protect different forms of subject matter. Copyright may subsist in creative and artistic works (e.g. books, poems, movies, music, paintings, photographs, databases, and software) and give a copyright holder the exclusive right to control reproduction or adaptation of such works for a certain period of time.

1) What is title insurance? How much does it cost? Should I buy it?

A partition case in Rhode Island (RI) is an equitable, legal action in which a person corporation or legal entity can force the sale of real estate against another co-owner or life tenant. Partition cases can be a result of many different types of real property disputes between owners or life tenants or other people with interests in the property as set forth in the Rhode Island statute. A partition case can involve either residential or commercial real estate.

Mechanically produced fonts and the characters comprising fonts are protected under UK law as typefaces. The legal definition for typefaces incorporates letters, numerals and ornamental motifs. Fonts and typefaces created for PCs, Apple computers and Linux systems however are protected are artistic works.

Electronically Created Typefaces

What is not made clear in the Act, but follows from basic principles of copyright is that electronically created fonts are protected by copyright, provided they are original. The protection is an indirect means of protecting the individual characters.

In Robin Ray v Classic FM, the English High Court held that a contractor providing services owns the intellectual property in the materials created for the client. The decision is a useful guide to contractors as it is one of the leading cases in determining the whether a commissioner of intellectual property may use intellectual property for purposes not expressly contemplated by a written agreement.

Background

“Lawsuits primarily benefit the attorneys and nobody else.”
- Bryce’s Law

INTRODUCTION

The protection of intellectual property should be a significant concern to all Information Technology organizations. Without protection, commercial hardware/software vendors would quickly evaporate as others would inevitably steal their designs and programs. Corporate developers would also suffer if their ideas, inventions, and programs were misappropriated thereby causing them to lose their competitive advantage. In fact, our corporate landscape and standard of living would be radically different if we had no such protection. Fortunately, the framers of the U.S. Constitution were wise enough to implement legislation safeguarding the authorship and ownership of literature, art, and inventions, thus causing the United States to flourish in the arts and sciences. But the advent of the computer caused us to reconsider how we safeguard such property. For example, the concept of a computer program has been a bit nebulous to some people; should the source code be protected by copyright? What about the object code (executable)? Attorneys have been debating this subject over the last thirty years and there is still
general confusion in the field.

This is part two of a three part series on the Rhode Island divorce process including divorce strategy. In part one, I discussed the initial stages of a divorce from finding a Rhode Island Attorney to filing for divorce. Please see below for a link to part one of this series.

This article discusses divorce strategy and the divorce process after filing for divorce. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. It is a very bad idea for a person to represent themselves in a Rhode Island divorce without a lawyer.

Service & Trade Marks

Marks are generally an identifier of source and quality. Rights generally accrue under common law upon adoption and use of a mark (name, symbol, logo, trade dress, style of doing business, etc.) in connection with a business. Marks may also be adopted for use in connection with non-profit and organizational activities, e.g., unions and trade associations.

It is generally recommended that a trademark clearance search be performed to determine the availability of a mark prior to its adoption. Typical client charges for such a search and related analysis and opinion is $ 450.