Store Layout Trade Dress
The way a store or restaurant looks is often central to the success of business. It is often also an asset of the business that can be protected as trade dress. Restaurants and stores (successful ones, at least) tend to…
Prevent your Trademark from Becoming a .xxx Domain
.XXX domain formats are due out soon. This means that you will begin to see (or not see) porn sites moving to the format www.SITENAME.xxx around the end of the year. This new domain is intended to isolate adult websites…
Patents and Triathlon Bikes
Douglas Robinson, IP editor over at Slowtwitch, writes an interesting piece about patent protection in tri bikes, a subject near and dear to my heart. Take a look at it here. I believe bike technology is one of the most…
Trademark Searches of Design Marks
Trademark searches can be informative tools. Yesterday, Bruno Tarabichi from Trademark Sentinel wrote about the effectiveness of a client-performed trademark search. He noted, quite rightly, that clients often choose to do their own search instead of having one professionally run….
Developing Trade Dress Rights
Trade dress is the protectable dress, design, packaging, or look-and-feel of a product or service. Because trademark rights are all about use and signaling in the consumer’s mind the source of the product, nearly anything that functions as such a…
iGenericide to iStrategy
Ok, I am guilty of it. Last week, I complained that everyone and their mother was sticking “i” in front of a word and calling it a brand, but darn’d if I can’t help but do it too – and…
International Trademark Scams
I’ve written before about invention promotion scams, and when my clients file trademark applications, I always warn them about receiving official-looking documents requesting payments for various kinds of trademark registration and monitoring services. However, to this point, the scams I…
iGenericide
I don’t want to see any more i-whatever names. I am continually amazed at the number of companies, stores, and products that get branded with a leading “i.” Apple was creative when it developed the iMac. It carried that…
Accuracy and Precision in Patent Writing
One concern I frequently hear from prospective clients, especially when I am explaining the patent search process, is that patents are difficult to read because they use complicated language instead of simple words. “Why say opposed co-acting jaws pivoted to…
Foreign-Priority Trademark Applications and their Benefits
US trademark applications and registrations can be used to obtain trademark protection in other countries. Similarly, foreign trademark applications and registrations can be the basis for a trademark application filed in the US. As a member to a number of…