Protecting Your Intellectual Property - Steps to Ensure No Information Is Leaked

Regardless of your type of business, intellectual property can be one of your most valuable assets. Intellectual property is any unique creation and expression of the mind. Whether your business is technology-, consumer- or professional service-based, protecting your intellectual property, such as trade secrets, can be key factors to your success. For that reason, investing in the protection of your intellectual property is an important part of your business operation. Failure to police and defend your intellectual property rights could ultimately result in a loss of financial gain. Certain laws have been put into place to help protect your intellectual property, such as trade dress, copyrights, patents and trademarks.

Trade secrets include things such as formulas, practices, processes, designs, instruments, patterns, or a compilation of information that is not generally known or easily attained. Using trade secrets, businesses obtain an economic advantage over competition. In order to have a trade secret, companies must take steps to protect the secrecy of their information. Exposing a trade secret means competitors can have access to that knowledge, which could impair that company's market dominance or market position.

One of the easiest and most basic steps your company can take to protect your trade secrets is to require employees, contractors, and any companies that may be exposed to your trade secrets to execute confidentiality or non-disclosure agreements. Failure to enter into these types of agreements may result in the exposure of your trade secrets and, in effect, the waiver of trade secret protection.

Trade dress refers to the distinctive look of a product or its packaging. Trade dress law is the legal protection for trade dress protected by statute. In order for trade dress to be considered protected under trade dress law, the protectable features must clearly identify a product, much like the Tiffany blue box. The features must also be nonfunctional, not affecting the product's cost, quality or a manufacturer's ability to effectively compete in a non-reputational way. The public policy behind trade dress is to protect innocent consumers from purchasing an inferior good or service because of confusingly similar trade dress to a trusted brand.

Copyright laws protect a creative expression fixed in a tangible medium. Copyrights do not protect ideas, but may protect the expression of an idea. A work is protected by copyright the moment it is created and fixed in a tangible form. While not mandatory, copyrights may be registered with the federal government to receive the highest protection possible. The safest course of action is to file for copyright protection to guarantee the highest protection of the work and to save time in the event that you would need to bring a lawsuit for infringement.

A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a state to an inventor for a fixed period of time in exchange for a disclosure of an invention. The rights granted to a patentee exclude others from making, using, selling or importing the invention. Obtaining a patent can help you protect your unique invention from infringement by a party unrelated to your business.

A trademark is a word, group of words or design that indicates the origin of goods or services. State and federal statutes protect trademarks in a special area of law called trademark law. If your business intends to use a trademark, it is a good idea to file an "Intent to Use" application to secure your trademark. Filing such an application will help protect your trademark ideas against infringement from competition. In contrast, if your business already uses a mark, filing a "use based" application will protect the intellectual property you already use as part of branding your business.

The success of your business may rely heavily on a technology your company created, or even on a secret family recipe that has been passed down through several generations. Whatever your company's intellectual property is, protecting it can be vital to maintaining your unique share of the marketplace. Taking these basic steps to ensure your intellectual property remains yours may help you avoid litigation, or in the event that litigation arises, may assist when seeking an injunction or protective action in the interest of your business.

Frederick Gaston
President of Gaston & Gaston, APLC
For more information about intellectual property rights and protection, please visit the Gaston and Gaston website http://www.gastonandgaston.com/

Song Titles, Lyrics, and Copyright Infringement: When Do I Need Permission?

If you're writing a novel or short story, you may encounter situations where you'd like to r

Q. Can I mention the title of a song in my work?

A. You can mention a song title -- or the title of anything else, for that matter -- freely, without asking permission.

Copyright law is based on the concept that unique works of authorship should be protected as the intellectual property of the author. However, it's important to note that in order to benefit from this protection, the work in question must both be unique and have original authorship.

Song titles, however, are considered neither of these things, and therefore they are not under copyright protection. In fact, in its "Copyright Basics" publication, the US Copyright Office specifically excludes "Titles, Names, [and] Short Phrases" from being eligible for copyright protection.

Q. Can I quote someone else's song lyrics in my work?

A. Except in certain cases, such as fair use, you will need permission before reproducing someone else's copyrighted material.

In most cases, using someone else's work without permission is considered copyright infringement. However, there are exceptions to this: Fair Use.

There is no hard-and-fast rule that states what is and is not considered Fair Use. Instead, the courts typically look at four factors:

The purpose and character of the useThe nature of the copyrighted materialThe amount of the work used, relative to the entire workThe effect of the use of the work might have on the market or value of the original work

The copyright does provide a few explicit purposes that qualify as fair use: commentary, criticism, and critique, for example. (This is how book reviews are allowed under copyright law, for example.) But there are other uses not specifically mentioned here, and whether or not your use is considered fair use, at the end of the day, must be decided by the courts -- the last place you want to end up.

Before it gets to that point, it's a good idea to look at the other factors so you can have some idea of whether or not your use might be considered fair.

With respect to song lyrics, look also at the factor relating to the amount of the work used. While there is no set percentage of the material that will be allowed at fair use, consider that quoting a mere two lines will be a more favorable use than reproducing the entire song.

Along these lines, the last factor can also help you determine whether or not your use might land you in hot water. The further the market for your new work is from the original market for the original song, the better your chances.

Here's an example. If you're writing a fiction novel and your protagonist walks into a coffee shop, a few lines from a song might be playing on the radio. Mentioning these lines helps to place your character in a certain time period; it likely does not detract from the original market or potential value of the song in the way that, say, reproducing the entire song in a Songs of the Century collection might.

Sarah Kolb, http://www.clickandcopyright.com/

Since 2000, Click and Copyright has helped thousands of small business owners, independent entrepreneurs, artists, musicians, and writers start new businesses, protect their intellectual property, and stay informed. Click and Copyright is a member of the Legal Research Center family of businesses.

Copyright Violations Work Both Ways on the Internet

As you probably know, and this is already happening in Europe; publishers, music companies, and film companies want to have websites pulled down, ISPs fined and/or shut down if they are found to have copyrighted material on them. As a writer, this sounds like a good idea to me, because I can't tell you how often my articles are stolen, and I find them somewhere on the Internet with someone else's name attached. Yet, I see another problem to all of this, and I'd like to explain it to you.

First, many publishers are angry because they are finding their books reproduced, republished, and even posted on the Internet, and therefore they lose out on the revenue. You certainly can't blame them for being upset, and as I explained as a writer I can't either. However, if they are allowed to fill out a form with some secret Internet committee, and that group can go and pull down a website, they we're going to have huge problems in the future. Anyone that has an Internet forum, blog network, or anything like that cannot possibly police every single person that posts a blog, article, or comment. Do you see that point?

Now then, I'd like to bring a case in point because there was an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal on November 8, 2011. The article was titled; "Spy Thriller: an Instant Classic-Vanishes amid Plagiarism Charges-Publisher Recalls Novel after Passages Discovered Mimicking Bond, James Bond," by Jeffrey A Trachtenberg. Okay so, can you see the problem here? Here is a company that sells books and e-books, and it found out one of its authors had plagiarized a spy novel. Worse, the company sold 8000 copies before anyone noticed. In fact, the article stated;

"Our reviewer didn't pick up anything suspicious, and a reader commenting on an online forum devoted to James Bond noted the similarity in the material. The online forum comment poster was able to identify at least 13 novels from which the material was similar, using Google books search engine."

Well, there you have it. Should that publisher's website be shut down, and taken off-line for copyright violations? Fair is fair, the publishers seem to want to be able to control other people's ISPs and websites, and have the power to turn them off. Are you beginning to see the problems we are going to have in the future with these laws? I surely do, and I fear that it may cause less information to end up online, and allow others to control the flow of information for their own personal gain.

Having control to turn off ISPs and websites based on copyright law could turn into a can of worms and give far too much power to those who would use it corruptly. Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.

Lance Winslow has launched a new provocative series of eBooks on Future Concepts. Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank; http://www.worldthinktank.net/

Can Google's New Semantic Search Keep Within Copyright Laws?

All great companies must evolve, and I believe Google to be a company which wishes to stay on the leading edge of its core business model. It is a search engine after all, it delivers information to the world, which is one of the main reasons the Internet exists in the first place. Today, the web is an accumulation of human knowledge, and it is also one of the greatest communication devices ever created in the history of mankind. Okay so, let's talk about some of the challenges ahead as Google attempts to give us the information we ask for.

Specifically I'd like to talk about copyright law, and ask; exactly who owns all that information. Are we getting to a point where knowledge and information isn't owned by anyone individual anymore, and therefore it should be free to the world, and since Google has found a way to do that and to make money doing that through advertising, I'd say that is of great benefit to all humans on this pale blue dot.

Now then, there was an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal on March 15, 2012; "Google Gives Search a Refresh," by Amir Efrati which stated; "Google is giving its tried-and-true Web-search formula a makeover as it tries to fix the shortcomings of today's technology and maintain its dominant market share. Over the next few months, Google's search engine will begin spitting out more than a list of blue links. It will also present more facts and direct answers to queries at the top of the search page results."

Indeed, what information are they going to display, whose information is it, and what format will they use? All those things will be carefully studied, analyzed, tested, and then presented for all of us to see. Chances are Google understands the human psyche, probably as good or better than anyone else on the planet due to their incredible data analytics, and massive treasure trove of human queries.

If you ask a question of the search engine and it presents you what you asked for on the screen rather than just giving you a list of websites which you then have to choose from, then it must gather that information in order to give it to you. Now then, where are they getting that information from - are they getting it from books, are those books copyrighted? Are they taking it from the Internet, and if so what websites? Does Google have a repository of endless information on every single fact known to mankind?

Apparently IBM does with their Watson supercomputer, but still it takes information from everywhere else, which is loaded up with information that it has accumulated from everywhere. Well, I think I have a solution for this;

What if Google bought The Encyclopedia Britannica Company?

The Encyclopedia Britannica is no longer going to print after over 200 years of printing encyclopedias. They have all the world's information, and that could be broken down and delivered in bits and pieces to the specific questions asked by the Internet users in their queries. Can Google afford to buy Encyclopedia Britannica? Well, Google can afford to buy just about anything, including the next president of the United States if they so desired. In fact that would be a drop in the bucket.

If I were running Google would I make an offer to buy Encyclopedia Britannica for their semantic search? You bet I would, and I would have already made the phone call before I posted this article. Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.

Cite:

1-WSJ article; "End of Era for Britanica" byShalini Ramachandran and Jeffrey Tratchenbrg, 3/14/2012.

Lance Winslow has launched a new provocative series of eBooks on Future Internet Concepts. Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank; http://www.worldthinktank.net/

Defending Copyrights - Challenges With First to Publish Proof in the Information Age

Just because you wrote something and put one of those little C's at the bottom of the page, and claim the copyright, doesn't mean that you won't find challenges in our information age. After all, you might write something, put it on a website or blog somewhere, perhaps an obscure place, or perhaps you may even write something and put it into a paper newsletter that goes out to your Homeowners Association, soccer team, or school. You wrote it first, and you claim copyright, but then someone else finds it, likes it, puts it on the Internet, or incorporates entire paragraphs and phrases into their own writing.

This happens all the time, and it's happened to me more times than I care to remember. Not long ago I found something that I wrote on someone else's website, I asked him to take it off. They said they wouldn't, and that they wrote it. But they didn't, I did. That concerns me, and it seems rather dishonest and the person definitely had a lack of integrity to claim my work, but since it was something that wasn't really important to me, I let it go. I'm sure if you are writer, you will run across this particular situation at some time in your career.

Another time, a similar situation occurred, but I was asked to prove that I had written it first, well, how can I prove that if I put it into a newsletter for local community? Well, in fact I did have a copy of that newsletter, so I was going to make a copy and send it to them, but then I thought to myself why bother, they are already dishonest, and why should I pay $.50 to mail it to them, or spend 10 minutes to scan it into the computer, and e-mail it as an attachment. Like that would do any good anyway, they may not take it off their website, and worse, I found that they must have owned multiple websites, or had some type of affiliate marketing program, because when I searched that phrase, I found it all over the place, not one giving me credit for my work.

It seems sometimes it's like the wild west out there on the Internet, and whereas there are some famous quotes, quips, and things that each of us write from time to time, there are certain things that are unique, that we produce ourselves, and the chances of anyone else producing that same paragraph are next to zero. So I ask, are we getting to a point on the Internet where you can't claim copyright anymore, and unless you are a large Corporation with a team to go out and enforce this, you are going to have to let it go, or you'll spend all your time and productivity chasing down Internet content bandits? Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on.

Lance Winslow has launched a new provocative series of eBooks on Future Writing Concepts. Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank; http://www.worldthinktank.net/

How Copy Protection Helps Protect Documents

Suppose you are a struggling author and you send out your first script in a digital format to a publisher. After a number of days has passed by, you decide to give them a call to check up on the status of your work, and they tell you that your script needed more work and that they will not be able to work with you at that time. Fast forward 3 months later and one fine day you decide to rent a movie in the same genre as you write for. Half way into the movie you come to a realization that the movie is based on the script you had sent out to them a few months back, with the same characters and a similar storyline.

More and more people in the field of creative works face a situation like the one described above at some point in their lives. And as a result, many shy away from sharing their most important works that could get them the recognition they so deserve. Time are a bit different nowadays as there are many data protection solutions that exist in the market. However, with many artists struggling to make their mark n the scene, the last thing they need is being overburdened with activities that further deplete their already exhausted resources.

This software is specialized data copy protection software that lets you protect your scripts, screenplays, stories, novels, poems, articles and other creative writing material or important documents. With this program, you can share your ideas with your peers without enabling them to copy your whole story.

The data protection provided by this program is drive-specific and allows you to protect your most important work by limiting access to your work by disallowing your data to be run from any unauthorized drive. It works by converting your files into copy protected executable application using advanced multilayer copy protection technology which cannot be tampered in any way. All you are required to do to begin protecting your data and information is to simply add the files you wish to protect from illegal copying and distribution directly to Copy Protect, select the drive or medium where you want to save these protected files, and leave the rest to the application.It converts all supported formats into copy protected applications and burns them to a CD/DVD or copy them to a portable or fixed drive so that you can freely share this drive or CD/DVD with anyone without the fear of data being copied or stolen.

All your worries about data theft and data leak are put to rest with the simple but feature-rich copy protect. It provides a user-friendly interface, easy navigation menus, and simple wizards to help you start protecting your data from being illegally accessed and copied.

Until recently, you were at the mercy of either lawyers, expensive applications, or other such means that only burdened you more with unnecessary or real means of recovery or protection. But now you have the power in your hands. It will not only get you across the many hurdles that you will have to face during the initial time you have to get up on your feet to make your mark, but also stays with you all the way through your successful years.

This software is a product of NewSoftwares Inc., a Beaverton based corporation.

Mark Neil is associated with New Software Inc that provides data encryption software.