Inside Small Business | Small Business & Home Business Marketing
Archive for October, 2007
10 Steps to Protect Your Great Idea
Got a Great Idea? Follow these First Steps:
1. Put all your ideas, notes and drawings in an inventor’s journal, and have it signed, witnessed and dated. Be careful about disclosing your ideas to anyone—use a confidentiality or non-disclosure document when discussing your ideas.
2. File a Disclosure Document Program with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (www.uspto.gov). This costs only $10 for two years of pursuit of patenting, but it’s not a patent.
3. Conduct a Preliminary Patentability Search to discover what patents exist like your ideas—and get a patent attorney to render you a Patentabilty Opinion. There are many ways to conduct the search, including the Patent Depository Libraries on the uspto.gov Web site. File a PTO Provisional Patent Application for one year if all looks good.
4. Make a model, demo or illustration and conduct preliminary market research with end-users. Know the consumers of your product, and listen to feedback. Use feedback to fine tune your project.
5. Investigate intellectual property filings such as utility and design patents in the United Staes and overseas. Also investigate copyrights, trademarks, servicemarks and domain name registrations for Web sites. Explore U.S. and international protection options and limitations.
6. Think about the two main pathways to inventing success: entrepreneurship or licensing—how do you want to be rewarded for your great ideas? The pathway you choose will dictate a lot of your actions—and budget.
7. Do not fall prey to invention development/promotion scams, which are prevalent. Check with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for a list of these unscrupulous firms. If their promises sound too good to be true, they probably are. Get real professional help and seek the support of legitimate inventor organizations.
8. Investigate competitive products to make your product superior or better priced. Employ brainstorming techniques to evolve and accelerate the marketability of your ideas.
9. Find an inventor mentor—some one who’s done this process before—to provide guidance.
10. Believe in your ideas and persevere—it takes some time and effort to do all this right. Be realistic about your goals and good luck.
Copyright © Alan Tratner. Alan is a SCORE counselor and the program manager of the Santa Barbara Small Business Development Center (SBSBDC). Source: Score.org/protect_great_idea.html
Have You Trademarked your Logo?
The MGM™ lion. The Nike™ Swoosh. The Target™ Bullseye. These logos are more than images. They give companies instant recognition with buyers and represent an organization’s individuality. Logos for well-known companies can be identified at a glance and have tremendous marketing power. That’s why it’s important to get a top-notch logo design. And simplicity is the name of the game in today’s competitive logo world. Ornate details get lost in today’s one-glance environment.
So, even if you’re starting small, you don’t know where your company will go – or grow. After all, Wal-Mart began in 1962 with a single five and dime store and is now the world’s largest corporation. In other words, you want to consider the future now. Think from the ground up and start by creating a unique and recognizable logo.
But you also want to keep yourself safe on both sides of the logo process. That means (a) protecting your logo and (b) making sure you’re not using someone else’s logo.
The best way to safeguard your logo? Trademark it. Trademarks protect words, names, symbols, sounds and colors and distinguish one company’s goods and products from another. Trademarking a logo not only protects it from being used by other similar companies, it also protects a company from unknowingly infringing upon an existing logo.
Why Trademark a Logo?
Registering your mark gives you legal protection and lets the public know you own the mark. In fact, the mark ® can only be used after the logo is actually registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
There are two types of marks you can register with the USPTO (1) trademarks, which identify goods or products and (2) service marks, which are used exclusively to identify services.
If you do not officially register your logo with the USTPO, you can still use it. That’s because using a logo creates a “common law” trademark. Common law trademarks use either the “TM” (trademark) or “SM” (service mark) symbol to inform businesses that you own your logo. However, common law trademarks offer limited protection. To protect yourself nationally, it is best to register for a federal trademark. And in case of a lawsuit, your trademark registration provides a documented start date for your use of the mark.
A Trademark Search for Your Logo
Before registering a trademark for your logo, it’s best to do a trademark search. This will determine if your logo is truly unique. You can perform a trademark search on the USTPO website at www.uspto.gov to determine if your logo is already in use by someone else. Attorneys and professional search companies, like LegalZoom, can also conduct more comprehensive searches.
Keep in mind that a search is not required. However, if the logo you want to trademark is found to be too similar to one already in existence, your application will be denied. Government filing fees are not refunded.
How to Trademark a Logo
Trademarks are classified by a business’ particular goods and services. You must complete the appropriate application. The USPTO then reviews trademark applications for federal registration.
If you are interested in trademarking your logo, company name and domain name, each one must be trademarked separately. Even if your business name is part of your logo, the two must be registered individually.
It takes between 10 and 16 months to secure trademark registration with the USPTO. However, your logo is protected as of the date of filing, not the date of issue, so you can begin using your trademark immediately. Visit LegalZoom.com to learn more about trademark registration. LogoWorks customers can get 10% off any trademark order, click here to learn more.
State vs. Federal Trademarks
State trademarks only protect a logo in a specific state. Federal trademarks offer national protection but are only available to companies conducting business in more than one state. However, businesses operating in only one state usually find that a state trademark offers enough protection. Web businesses or those operating across state lines may want the protection of a federal trademark.
I’ve Trademarked My Logo, Now What?
Anyone whose logo identifies a business or profession should seriously consider trademark protection. Once you establish your trademark, the legal mark lasts forever. Just make sure to keep up with registration renewals at the five and ten year marks.
For more information on Trademarking your logo, visit www.legalzoom.com.
The legal side of linking
As the volume and complexity of online information grows, aggregator websites are becoming increasingly useful and lucrative. Many websites aggregate news headlines that link within the originating news site to the originating news site’s page for a specific news story. This is called deep linking. These websites generate income through the sale of advertisements. The question arises as to whether such websites violate intellectual property laws.
In general, this type of deep linking does not violate trademark or copyright laws. Collecting and posting news headlines would probably not infringe the copyright of the originating site or constitute “passing off” the originating site’s work in violation of the federal trademark law under the Lanham Act. Similarly, linking directly to the originating site does not constitute copying of the content on that site, and newspaper headlines, unlike the articles they highlight, are generally not copyrightable. URLs of web pages, like addresses for streets, are also not copyrightable, so reproduction of the headline and URL on a website does not infringe the copyright of the originating site.
A related issue is whether deep linking implies an association between the two sites and is likely to confuse consumers as to the source of the content provided through the link, which is often referred to as “passing off”. The likelihood that the public will be confused is heightened if the linking site uses the originating site’s logos on its own site, or if the linking site “frames” the content of the originating page with the frame of the linking page. Nevertheless, the case law in this area suggests that deep linking does not infringe others’ trademark rights so long as the aggregating website makes it clear who the source of the link is.
In designing a deep linking website, the best practice is to avoid using trademarks, logos, slogans and trade dress of the originating site on the linking site. It is also wise to take steps to inform the users of your website that you are not affiliated with, sponsored by, or otherwise associated with the originating site. One method of achieving this is to attribute the headline and corresponding story to its source in close proximity to the link. And remember that absolutes that apply to every deep linking situation are rare, so consult with legal counsel who is familiar with your unique situations and knows the relevant law.
Author Michael Mangelson is Salt Lake City Chair of Stoel Rives’ Technology & Intellectual Property (IP) Section. For more information on IP Law, contact Michael at memangelson@stoel.com.