Category: legal
We will never rent, share or sell your information to any person or any company for any reason.
We use Google and other third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. Google and these companies may use DART cookies (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) on your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you.
Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google Ad and Content Network Privacy Policy.
If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies please visit the Network Advertising Initiative.
Congratulations! Your company has a great new product or service and you get to create a name for it. (In a perfect world, a positioning strategy would have been developed prior to product development. If not, stop right now and put one together. It will ensure your brand strategy---and the name--- is on target.)
Keep in mind that coming up with a new brand name can be challenging---you’d be surprised how many people have come up with the exact same name that you thought was completely original.
Be sure to screen the trademark status of name concepts as you and your team come up with them---before you, your boss or your client fall in love with a name that you find out is already owned by the competition. Ouch.
You can do a preliminary check online of name concepts by using TESS, the Trademark Electronic Search System of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, aka USPTO (Our government does love acronyms, don’t they?) Be sure to check dead as well as live trademarks, and check variations in spelling, plural versus single, etc. Keep in mind that even if you see a favorite name trademarked, you may still be able to trademark it if it is not in a competing category. Or, your search may show that it’s clear, when it isn’t. TESS is useful as an early screener only.
Do a search on the internet too, using more than one search engine.
Even if there aren’t any conflicts within your category, you still aren’t home free---a trademark isn’t a done deal until the USPTO says it is, and that requires a more thorough search, trademark application, etc (You’ll likely need to keep reminding yourself, the client and your boss of this.)
Okay, so listen up, this is important: This post is meant to provide some guidelines for the name ideation process, but it is not a substitute for legal advice. Since brands are one of the most important assets of a company, you’ll want to consult an attorney before you settle on or begin using a new brand name. If you’re an entrepreneur (or a company that wants to spend money wisely) do your research before you settle on an attorney.
BTW, not sure what the difference is between a trademark and a service mark? Click on the links to get your lingo straight, or check out brandeopedia for these and a bunch of other marketing terms.
See also: How to Register a Trademark, Wall Street Journal
tips, trends & tidbits from the week of march 10th
Pepsi skewers the stereotype that digital advertising is just for young consumers. A NYT article reports Pepsi is forsaking mainstream media for an online launch of Tava, their new, no-calorie carbonated beverage. Pepsi hopes to reach consumers 35-49 who spend significant amounts of time online checking email or searching for travel, music and food info. Lots more brands would benefit if marketers abandoned stereotypes of these older (and moneyed) online users.
Tava, inspired by “distinctive flavors enhanced with vitamins and imagination,” features exotic flavors such as Mediterranean Fiesta and Tahitian Tamure for folks who are way too sophisticated for soft drinks or water.
Start-ups and website publishers beware: Just because material is widely available on the internet and you think you’re such a small fish that no one will notice or care if you borrow it, doesn’t mean you’ll get away with it.
According to TechCrunch, tiny start-up ManagedQ was using images that belonged to Snap without Snap’s permission. So Snap disabled ManagedQ’s access to the visuals, which essentially shut ManagedQ down.
Although it’s easy to sympathize with ManagedQ, it’s just as easy to understand Snap’s actions. So, if you decide to use material from another site without permission or attribution, be warned. It could happen to you.
This is reminiscent of the trademark skirmishes that occasionally occur between mega brands and tiny companies who play off the mega brand to create a clever name/tagline/logo of their own. The big brand’s legal eagles swoop in, handling the situation with such ferocity that onlookers see the infringer as the victim. The reality is that failure to protect one’s trademark weakens one’s ownership rights so trademark owners must be vigilant.
Comscore reports that during 2007 consumers submitted online requests for 32 million auto insurance quotes and purchased a record 2 million policies. That’s a 15% increase in the number of requests and a whopping 32% increase in the number of purchases from 2006.
What Were They Thinking? Okay, so I came across these Easter cards that offer your choice of a chocolate cross or chocolate hands clasped in prayer. They’re embedded in a card containing an Easter prayer. I love chocolate but I won’t/can’t eat it in the shape of a cross, nor will I eat chocolate shaped like body parts. Chocolate bunnies, however, are acceptable.
Have a great weekend.
"The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others."
"This License is a kind of "copyleft", which means that derivative works of the document must themselves be free in the same sense. It complements the GNU General Public License, which is a copyleft license designed for free software."
"We have designed this License in order to use it for manuals for free software, because free software needs free documentation: a free program should come with manuals providing the same freedoms that the software does. But this License is not limited to software manuals; it can be used for any textual work, regardless of subject matter or whether it is published as a printed book. We recommend this License principally for works whose purpose is instruction or reference."
Source: Wikia.com
"The term "free content" refers to work which is available for reuse under a license such as the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). People can not only copy free content, but also modify it and redistribute it (under the terms of the license). It is free as in freedom – the license grants freedoms that copyright normally denies."
"A good reason to use Wikia is that all of the content on these sites is perpetually licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, with no declared Cover Texts and no Invariant Sections. Thus, the content is free to use and will remain free. Images are under various free licenses or free use."
Source: Wikia.com
LawLink, "The Attorney Network," is a social network exclusively dedicated to attorneys.
LawLink.com
A patent for an invention is the grant of a property right to the inventor, issued by the Patent and Trademark Office. The term of a new patent is 20 years from the date on which the application for the patent was filed in the United States or, in special cases, from the date an earlier related application was filed, subject to the payment of maintenance fees.
US patent grants are effective only within the US, US territories, and US possessions.
The right conferred by the patent grant is, in the language of the statute and of the grant itself, “the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling” the invention in the United States or “importing” the invention into the
United States . What is granted is not the right to make, use, offer for sale, sell or import, but the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, selling or importing the invention.
Source:
United States Patent & Trademark Office
Copyright
“A form of protection provided to the authors of “original works of authorship” including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works, both published and unpublished. The 1976 Copyright Act generally gives the owner of copyright the exclusive right to reproduce the copyrighted work, to prepare derivative works, to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work, to perform the copyrighted work publicly, or to display the copyrighted work publicly.
The copyright protects the form of expression rather than the subject matter of the writing. For example, a description of a machine could be copyrighted, but this would only prevent others from copying the description; it would not prevent others from writing a description of their own or from making and using the machine. Copyrights are registered by the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress.”
What Works Are Protected?
Copyright protects “original works of authorship” that are fixed in a tangible form of expression. The fixation need not be directly perceptible so long as it may be communicated with the aid of a machine or device. Copyrightable works include the following categories:
-
literary works
-
musical works, including any accompanying words
-
dramatic works, including any accompanying music
-
pantomimes and choreographic works
-
pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works
-
motion pictures and other audiovisual works
-
sound recordings
-
architectural works
These categories should be viewed broadly. For example, computer programs and most “compilations” may be registered as “literary works”; maps and architectural plans may be registered as “pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works.”
For the most current information about copyrights, including the process to secure a copyright and how long a copyright endures, please visit the Unites States Copyright Office: http://www.copyright.gov/
What Is Not Protected by Copyright?
Several categories of material are generally not eligible for federal copyright protection. These include among others:
-
Works that have not been fixed in a tangible form of expression (for example, choreographic works that have not been notated or recorded, or improvisational speeches or performances that have not been written or recorded)
-
Titles, names, short phrases, and slogans; familiar symbols or designs; mere variations of typographic ornamentation, lettering, or coloring; mere listings of ingredients or contents
-
Ideas, procedures, methods, systems, processes, concepts, principles, discoveries, or devices, as distinguished from a description, explanation, or illustration
-
Works consisting entirely of information that is common property and containing no original authorship (for example: standard calendars, height and weight charts, tape measures and rulers, and lists or tables taken from public documents or other common sources)
International Copyright Protection
There is no such thing as an “international copyright” that will automatically protect an author’s writings throughout the entire world. Protection against unauthorized use in a particular country depends, basically, on the national laws of that country. However, most countries do offer protection to foreign works under certain conditions, and these conditions have been greatly simplified by international copyright treaties and conventions.
For further information and a list of countries that maintain copyright relations with the United States, request Circular 38a, International Copyright Relations of the
United States.
For the most current information about copyrights, including the process to secure a copyright and how long a copyright endures, please visit the Unites States Copyright Office: http://www.copyright.gov/
Source: United States Patent & Trademark Office
“A word, name, symbol or device which is used in trade with services to indicate the source of the services and to distinguish them from the services of others.
A trademark is the same as a service mark except that it identifies and distinguishes the source of a product rather than a service. The terms "trademark" and "mark" are commonly used to refer to both trademarks and service marks.
Trademark rights may be used to prevent others from using a confusingly similar mark, but not to prevent others from making the same goods or from selling the same goods or services under a clearly different mark. Trademarks which are used in interstate or foreign commerce may be registered with the Patent and Trademark Office.
The registration procedure for trademarks and general information concerning trademarks is described in a separate pamphlet entitled "Basic Facts about Trademarks.”
Source: United States Patent & Trademark Office
See also:
Brand Names, Product Names & Trademarks - What You Need to Know
How to Register a Trademark, Wall Street Journal
Browse legal terms related to marketing, or;
Use the search box at the top of the left sidebar
