Posts in Business

Starting the Patent Process on a Limited Budget

If you are an inventor new to inventing, you undoubtedly believe you’ve come up with an idea, or two or three, that could really be successful. That eternal optimism and belief in one’s self is precisely what every inventor needs to succeed. Now, if you are like the so many others who have walked in your footsteps before you, you’ve probably started researching how to patent an idea but have quickly become bombarded with information from a variety of sources.  “I have no clue where to start, and I have only a limited budget,” is a typical new inventor question. “What should be my first step?” The patent process can be complex and knowing where to begin and how to approach the process in a cost-responsible manner is not always easy, particularly for first time inventors. Of course, before proceeding it is worth first asking why it is you want a patent? The road to invention riches may, or may not, include obtaining a patent, although at least filing a provisional patent application can be and usually is a wise first step for a variety of reasons.

Trusting Your Secrets to the Government

According to Merriam-Webster, the “Word of the Year for 2019 is “they” when used in the singular, typically to avoid ascribing a gender to the person being referred to. The larger point is this: language matters. Since this is a space dedicated to secrecy, let’s consider how we use language to determine who gets access to our trade secrets. For today, we’ll be looking specifically at how government does this. After all, they write the laws and so should be practiced at defining exceptions to property rights. Why should the government care at all about business secrets? Examples will help us here. Locally, the fire department needs to know what hazardous chemicals you might be storing at your plant, in case they have to come and put out a fire there. For different but equally compelling reasons, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) insists on knowing exactly how drugs are made, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requires submission of pesticide ingredients. And then there is the government as consumer: last year the U.S. spent over $550 billion on purchasing goods and services from the private sector, and with all that economic clout comes the right to demand access to a lot of related data.

What Baby Yoda and T-Mobile’s Magenta Mark Can Teach Us About When to Enforce IP Rights

Deciding whether or not to enforce one’s intellectual property rights is a significant decision for any business (or individual). Litigation in general tends to be an expensive proposition and intellectual property litigation ranks toward the top with regard to average cost. While the average total cost of U.S. trademark infringement and copyright infringement litigation varies depending on the nature of the case and the stakes involved, such costs (i.e., attorneys’ fees and third-party costs) average in the $300,000-$500,000 range. Patent infringement litigation is typically even more expensive. Intellectual property enforcement decisions therefore must be made with care, taking into consideration all relevant legal, financial, and other business considerations. This article discusses the considerations affecting intellectual property enforcement decisions through the prism of two examples: T-Mobile’s trademark rights in the color magenta and the very popular Baby Yoda GIFs that seem to be everywhere online. Both companies recently experienced considerable backlash when IP enforcement of these rights went wrong.

Eight Tips to Protect Your Trade Secrets with Effective Restrictive Covenant Agreements

Trade secret theft is often an inside job. Employees who know they’re about to leave for a competitor or start their own competing business will sometimes try and get an unfair head start by taking their employer’s confidential information—customer lists, strategic plans, etc.—as they head out the door. A necessary tool for preventing the misappropriation and use of a company’s valuable trade secrets is a well-crafted employee restrictive covenant agreement. Having employees under at least some form of such an agreement is important for two reasons. First, both state and federal trade secret statutes require employers to take reasonable steps to protect the secrecy of information sought to be protected under those statutes. Second, restrictive covenant agreements provide employers contractual remedies, over and above the statutory trade secret protections, that can be used to prevent theft and use of a company’s confidential information.

Five Years Later, the U.S. Patent System is Still Turning Gold to Lead

Five years after the last of the four decisions in patent eligibility doctrine by the Supreme Court—creating what is now referred to as the Alice-Mayo framework—the impact of this upheaval in the patent system has become even more clear. Ongoing court decisions and new data confirm that the Alice-Mayo framework has wrought an unsettling revolution and sowed uncertainty in what former U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director David Kappos has referred to as the “the greatest innovation engine the world has ever known.” As policy debates on subject matter eligibility ramped up this past year, it is time to return back to the original dataset created by Robert Sachs and David Kappos that we presented in Turning Gold to Lead and provide an update.

Clawing Deeper into the Monster v. Raptors Trademark Battle

Torontonians may have accepted the loss of Kawhi Leonard, but another Raptors asset is still at risk: their newest logo. As detailed here, the Raptors are tipping off against energy drink company, Monster, who allege the Raptors’ logo—featuring a clawed-up basketball—is confusingly similar to their own claw-mark logo. Since first filing their United States trademark opposition suit in 2015, Monster has continued their court battle against the Raptors for the last four years with no known resolution to date. Monster has a whopping 176 trademarks active in Canada at this time. Their most recognizable and widely used mark contains three jagged vertical gashes, resembling those from a claw, in the shape of the letter M. Since 2002, Monster has used the claw-like logo on everything from their beverage products, to event sponsorships, to clothing. The Raptors, on the other hand, have only been using their clawed-up basketball logo since 2014, when they underwent a brand redesign, and do not own a federal trademark registration for the rebranded mark in Canada.