Introduction

• Intellectual Property Law: The Basics
• Determining What Rights Apply to Your Work

Part 1: Patent Law

• Patent Law: Overview
• Patent Law: What’s New Since the Last Edition?
• Patent Law: Definitions
• Patent Law: Forms
  • Patent Application Basics
  • Preparing a Design Patent Application

Part 2: Copyright Law

• Copyright Law: Overview
• Copyright Law: What’s New Since the Last Edition?
• Copyright Law: Definitions
• Copyright Law: Forms
  • Preparing a Copyright Application
  • Preparing an Electronic (eCO) Copyright Application
  • Preparing a Traditional Print Copyright Application

Part 3: Trademark Law

• Trademark Law: Overview
• Trademark Law: What’s New Since the Last Edition?
• Trademark Law: Definitions
• Trademark Law: Forms
  • Preparing a Federal Trademark Application
  • The Trademark Application: the TEAS System
  • Example of a TEAS Plus Application

Part 4: Trade Secret Law

• Trade Secret Law: Overview
• Trade Secret Law: What’s New Since the Last Edition?
• Trade Secret Law: Definitions
• Trade Secret Law: Forms
  • Preparing a Nondisclosure Agreement

Index

Introduction

A photographer questions why an advertising agency can copy her photographs without permission. An inventor is disappointed to learn that he cannot stop a foreign manufacturer from making his patented invention. A woman named Tiffany doesn’t understand why she can’t name her vintage clothing and jewelry store Tiffany’s Trifles.

Welcome to the world of intellectual property.

Writers, inventors, and artists transform ideas into tangible property. When this property qualifies under the law for protection it’s known as intellectual property (or IP)—for example, patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets. Creators of IP are granted specific rights. The author of a book, for instance, can prevent others from copying it, and the owner of a patented invention can prevent others from making, using, or selling the device.

After a time, these exclusive rights can be lost or taken from the owner and given to the public. For example, copyright protection has ended for Mark Twain, and anyone is free to copy his books Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The patent on the original Rollerblade invention has expired, and companies are now free to copy the device.

But not all products of the mind can achieve protection under intellectual property law. Determining what can be protected used to be the exclusive domain of patent, copyright, and trademark lawyers. Unfortunately, few businesses, nonprofits, or educational institutions can afford to call an attorney with every question. And lately, there are a lot of questions. Globalization, digital content, artificial intelligence, and the internet have contributed to a greater-than-ever need for information about IP.

Fortunately, intellectual property is not an inscrutable discipline. Anybody can understand the basics. This book is proof that IP law is not a mystery. For more than 27 years, engineers, scientists, business people, academics, and attorneys have used this book as a reference for understanding basic patent, copyright, trademark, and trade secret principles. This helpful desk reference has evolved to include hundreds of definitions, statutes, forms, and bits of how-to information about protecting and preserving intellectual property.

Hopefully, it will make your job easier, your employer more secure, and your business more prosperous.

Intellectual Property Law: The Basics

Intellectual property laws, along with court decisions and regulations, establish rules for the following activities:

• registration and administration of intellectual property
• selling or licensing of intellectual property, and
• resolving disputes between companies making or selling similar intellectual property products and services.

Intellectual property laws don’t prevent someone from stepping on an owner’s rights. But the laws do give an owner the ammunition with which to take a trespasser to court. This is the most well-known benefit of owning intellectual property: The owner acquires exclusive rights and can file a lawsuit to stop others who use the property without authorization. If the intellectual property owner does not confront the person or company who has acted without permission, the illegal activity will likely continue.

Determining What Rights Apply to Your Work

Intellectual property law consists of several separate and overlapping legal disciplines, each with its own characteristics and terminology. This book is divided into four sections, each for a different type of intellectual property.

If you are concerned about your creation, you’ll first need to know what form (or forms) of intellectual property protects it.

• Patent law establishes three types of patents:
  • Utility patents (the most common) are awarded for new processes, machines, manufactures, compositions of matter, or new uses of any of the above. The utility patent owner has the exclusive right to make, use, and sell the invention for a limited term—it expires 20 years after the date the application was filed.
  • Design patents are awarded to new nonfunctional, ornamental, or aesthetic design elements of an invention or product. A design patent lasts 15 years from issuance if it was filed on or after May 13, 2015; if filed before that date, it lasts 14 years from issuance.
  • Plant patents are granted for new asexually reproducible plants (plants reproducible by grafting or cloning). A plant patent expires 20 years from the date the patent was filed.
• Copyright law protects expressions of creative ideas such as songs, artwork, writing, films, software, architecture, and video games. Copyright law does not protect ideas and facts, only how those ideas and facts are expressed. Copyright protection lasts a long time, often more than 100 years.
• Trademark law protects marketing signifiers such as the name of a product or service or the symbols, logos, shapes, designs, sounds, or smells used to identify it. This protection can last as long as the company continuously uses the trademark in commerce—for example, many trademarks, such as Coca-Cola and General Mills, have been protected for over a century.
• Trade secret law commonly protects confidential designs, devices, processes, compositions, techniques, formulas, information, or recipes. A trade secret is any confidential information that gives a business a competitive advantage. Under trade secret law, the owner of this confidential information can prevent others from using it if it was obtained illegally. Trade secret protection lasts for as long as the business maintains the secret.

Forms of Intellectual Property: How They Overlap

Sometimes, trade secret, copyright, patent, and trademark laws intersect for a particular product or service. Some common examples of this are as follows:

• Trade secret and patent. It is possible to pursue a patent application while simultaneously maintaining the invention as a trade secret, at least for the first 18 months of the U.S. patent application process. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) regards applications as confidential until they are published. Unless the applicant files a Nonpublication Request (NPR) at the time of filing and doesn’t file for a patent outside the United States, the PTO will publish the application within 18 months of the filing date.

• Copyright and trademark. It’s not uncommon for an item to be protected under both trademark and copyright law. For example, the expressive artwork in a package design might be protected by copyright, while the overall look and feel of the package might be protected as a form of trademark. Likewise, an advertising commercial might include some material covered by copyright (for example, a jingle) and other material covered by trademark (the product or company name). The difference here is that copyright protects the literal expression, while trademark protects whatever is used to designate the source of a product or service offered in the marketplace.
• Patent, copyright, and trademark. Patent law can intersect with copyright and trademark law in the case of certain products. For example, the designer of a toy or jewelry can protect the device’s name or appearance (as a trademark), the design of the item (design patent), the appearance of any artwork or graphics (copyright), and the novel, nonobvious functionality of the device (utility patent).

IP Around the World

Most countries in the world have entered into intellectual property treaties that afford members mutual rights. This does not mean that anything protected in the United States will necessarily be protected abroad. However, intellectual property protected in America can achieve protection abroad under the standardized rules established by the various treaties. For example, the Madrid Protocol has standardized the process for obtaining trademark protection among member countries. Similarly, the Berne Convention establishes international copyright principles, and the Paris Convention and the Patent Cooperation Treaty offer harmonization for owners of patents. Trade secrets can receive international protection under GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade).

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