Look for value in intellectual property (trademarks, trade secrets, patents), real estate (leases), and other pieces of the business, and consider creating a holding company that can accumulate this value while walling off liabilities.

Sometimes a company is worth more than the sum of its parts…

“No vehicle shall be turned so as to proceed in the opposite direction within an intersection, or upon any street in a business district, or upon a freeway, expressway or controlled-access highway, or where authorized signs are erected to prohibit such movement, or at any other location unless such movement can be made with reasonable safety to other users of the street and without interfering with the safe operation of any traffic that may be affected by such movement.”

Translation:  ”Don’t make a U-Turn unless you’re safe about it.”

Nothing could be further from the truth!

Developing a trademark (or service mark) is something that should be done with care, caution, and with the input of trusted advisors. Marketing and legal departments should work “arm-in-arm” to ensure the most seamless transition from product manufacture to product marketing. A business should not presume that, because no other company is “using the name,” the USPTO will grant the registration of a particular trademark for a particular product.

Several general principles are important to note when considering a trademark.

Too frequently, businesses believe that their intellectual property marks are protected simply because they have reserved a website URL or even because they have been given a name reservation by the Secretary of State. Entrepreneurs who do not take the time to review and consider their branding in light of trademark law run the risk of 1) losing any possible chance to make such brand distinctive, or 2) even worse, running afoul of some other entity’s rights in a particular mark.

The moral of the story for business owners, entrepreneurs, and marketing departments is:  Take the time to involve your trusted legal team in the concept BEFORE you push the product or service to market under a particular name!

COPYRIGHTS

A copyright is intellectual property tied to the tangible expression of an underlying idea or concept, and protects the original author of both published and unpublished works. Common examples include songs or musical scores. The music or score itself can be protected by copyright as it is tangibly expressed.

Simply having a tune in one’s head, unfortunately, does not protect that tune. One must place that tune in tangible form (or “copy”) for the copyright protection to be secured. Registered copyrights give the holder protection for a period of time. Once the time period has elapsed, these works are open to others for reproduction and republication.

A copyright does not have to be registered, however, to be protectable. There are certain advantages to registration, and with the relative ease of registration, any valuable work should certainly be copyrighted. A copyright is automatically secured when a work is tangibly created, or fixed in a copy (i.e., on a CD or other media). “Copies” are material objects from which a work can be read, heard, viewed, or visually perceived either directly or with the aid of a machine or device, such as books, manuscripts, sheet music, film, videotape, DVD, CD, or microfilm.

Copyrights are registered through the U.S. Copyright Office, and those filed in or after 1978 will last for the author’s life plus 70 years after his or her death. Registration of copyright gives the author more definitive protection and rights under law and equity to sue and claim more hefty damages for infringement or abuse of one’s copyrighted material. Registration also allows an owner of a copyright to charge license fees or other permission fees (royalties) for others’ use of that copyrighted material.

Much more information about the types of Copyrights can be found on the U.S. Copyright office’s website. A brief article from that website reviewing the basics can be found here.

Our next post will deal with the concept of trademarks.

“Intellectual property” describes particular rights which individuals or entities own or
hold over conceptual creations. Things such as inventions, works of art, writings, designs, music, ideas, or choreography are examples of “intellectual property.” Generally speaking, intellectual property can be categorized into four major types:
patents, copyrights, trade secrets, and trademarks. Today’s post focuses on a brief overview of patents.

PATENTS

The term “patent” generally means a right or privilege of protection granted to a person who invents new and useful processes, machines, or any new and useful improvement of a current invention. Examples of particular patents for inventions include biological patents, business method patents, chemical patents, and software patents. Patents are legal property rights applied to inventions (as opposed to works of art or literature), and they are governed and cataloged by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (Website). Typically, patent protection applies apply to such items as methods, processes, machines, software compilations, manufacturing designs, or even biological discoveries.

Patent holders have certain rights of exclusive use and protection of their patented item. These rights allow patent holders exclusively to license, use, sell, market, and advance their product into the market. If another player encroaches on their patent right during the patent term, the patent holder has the right to sue for infringement. Such suits may result in various types of damages, including, without limitation, treble damages and attorneys’ fees levied against the infringing party.

Patents are protectable by inventors, however, only for a certain time before they expire. Approved patents can protect the owner generally for 20 years after the date on which the patent application is filed, but some patents provide shorter term protection. Patent protection is very important for businesses that center around unique and valuable products and/or ideas.

The next post will focus on another form of intellectual property — Copyrights.

Many kind regards during this season of non-work-related activity! Kindly accept, without obligation, express or implied, and with no representation or warranty as to the nature, extent, or fulfillment of any result of such wishes, these exceedingly best wishes for an environmentally-safe, socially-responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, and gender-neutral celebration of the winter-solstice holiday or other such season-neutral labor-refraining period of time as practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice (provided, however, that such wish made toward or in light of such tradition does not exclude any wish made toward or in light of another religious tradition, or secular persuasion, or agnostic emotive determination thereunto, and should not be construed as such); and, furthermore and together with, for a fiscally-successful, personally-fulfilling, and medically-uncomplicated onset of the generally-accepted calendar year (including, but not limited to, the Christian calendar, but not without due respect for and acknowledgement of the calendars of choice of other cultures or non-cultures or people groups, in general).

The preceding wishes are extended without regard to the race, creed, age, physical ability, religious faith or lack thereof, clothing style, preferred means of transportation, or choice of computer platform of the wishee(s), its agents, successors, or assigns.

preceding post augmented from another post found here.

I don’t do a lot of dictation (I draft better when I am sitting in front of my monitor and typing), but for the dictation of short emails, texts, and even routine letters, this application is stellar. I highly recommend it for lawyers on the road. Anywhere you have a cell or Internet connection, the dictation just works. In my tests, it has about a 90-95% accuracy rate; better than the Dragon software I have at the office. Kudos to Nuance for a very useful app!

Oh, for those of you worried about the license agreement, which purportedly allows Nuance access to the contact list on your phone, Nuance has recently addressed that concern:

As you may have experienced already, Dragon Dictation for the iPhone goes through your contact list on your iPhone and uploads the names to our server. We do this for a pretty simple reason: we found that people are often dictating names from their address book and expect the names to be recognized. We take this information and create an anonymous user profile for your device that understands what names are likely to dictate into a document. It’s important to note that we only upload the names, not the e-mail addresses, phone numbers or any other personally identifying information from your contacts.

The massive government overhaul of healthcare will be a crushing blow to any remaining independence states might have in this arena. It will be a federally-mandated state tax increase. We are no longer a decentralized republic.

Here is the actual settlement document.