Law 101: Intellectual Property

There are few worse feelings than seeing the work that you produced being used by someone else without permission.  I have talked to many creative, small businesses, or freelancers, who are frustrated when they discover that their work has been duplicated.  It is a violation of their hard work.  Also, when you are boot-strapping your business, it is extremely frustrating to see someone else benefit from your efforts and gain the rewards when you really need those rewards coming to you instead to keep your business afloat.
In this series of posts, I’m going to discuss how to protect your Intellectual Property (“IP”).  We’ll start with some definitions here because the difference between each category sometimes gets confusing. The most important part of protecting your IP is knowing what type of IP you have.

First, let’s define the various types of IP:

• Copyright – the exclusive right of the author or creator of a literary or artistic property (such as a book, movie or musical composition) to print, copy, sell, license, distribute, transform to another medium, translate, record or perform or otherwise use (or not use) and to give it to another by will.
  • Federal Filing
• Trademark – a distinctive design, picture, emblem, logo or wording (or combination) affixed to goods for sale to identify the manufacturer as the source of the product.
  • Federal Filing
• Patent – an exclusive right to the benefits of an invention or improvement granted by the U.S. Patent Office, for a specific period of time, on the basis that it is novel (not previously known or described in a publication), "non-obvious" (a form which anyone in the field of expertise could identify), and useful.
  • Federal Filing
• Design Patent - a new, original and ornamental design for a manufactured article
  • Federal Filing
• Trade Dress – the characteristics of or the visual appearance of a product or its packaging (or even the design of a building) that signify the source of the product to consumers.
  • State law based claim (no a federal filing options or federal claim options)
• Trade Secret - a process, method, plan, formula or other information unique to a manufacturer, which gives it an advantage over competitors.
  • Federal Law based claim, but no Federal Registration (it's a secret... shhhhhh)

​How to apply for and enforce your rights to your own IP is different for every type of IP.  In the following posts (coming every few days or so), we are going to discuss each type of IP independently (I don’t want you to get overwhelmed with one giant post).  I am very lucky to have an excellent patent attorney, Ann McCamey, who will be handling the articles on patent law since that is an area in which I do not specialize.

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