Patent applications typically take quite a while to become actual patents. It’s currently taking between 2 and 4 years just to get the First Office Action from the Patent Office. There are a few ways to speed up the examination…
Fellow Harvey Mudd College grad Janet Hansen, who is President and Chief Fashion engineer of Enlighted Designs, has found, perhaps inadvertently, a way to combat the inability to get copyright protection in clothing design. While you generally can’t protect the…
With the D: All Things Digital conference going on right now, there is a great video posted over on Kara Swisher’s digital column: an interview of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs at the D5 conference back in 2007. Interesting to…
I blogged about open-source solutions a bit ago, and it looks like the open-source / crowdsourcing / community-based design approach is being applied again. GE is soliciting ideas from the public for their next ad campaign. Another example of leveraging…
Steve O’Donnell, over at 3C Patent Law, has a nice, quick description of how a trademark owner can lose its rights through dilution. I’ve excerpted some of it here, but read the whole post for a better explanation: Consider this…
A podcast I listen to was ranting about the worthlessness of TMZ and wondering how TMZ can publish pictures of celebrities without their approval. The host’s point was that celebrities make their money on their image and would be compensated…
Have an invention you want to patent, or are you about to file a patent application? Change may be in the works at the USPTO. Today, the Senate reached a “tentative agreement” over a patent reform bill that has been…
I posted an article a little while ago about the power of social networking in a pre-litigation scenario. Beernews.org put out an article about a cease-and-desist letter that Hansen, owner of the MONSTER trademark, sent small-town Rock Art Brewery, concerning…
Applications of open-source theories of cooperation and development are popping up all over the place. In veiled product R&D, Coca Cola now offers a self-serve soda fountain – the Freestyle – where users can mix hundreds of different flavors to…
Social networking helped you connect with your high school friends, then helped you find colleagues and business contacts across the country. Now it is being used by companies to ward off marauding trademark holders protecting their brand and then some,…