Buying A Website – Problems With Intellectual Property
Posted on March 22, 2008 - Filed Under Legal and Law | Leave a Comment
There are many ways to make money online including buying another website that may be a competitor or compliment to yours. When doing so, you need to watch out for IP problems.
The creation of a web business tends to be a herky-jerky event. Things can go full blast for a few months, sit gathering dust for a year and then get rolling again. This can lead to a certain lack of organization in the business. In particular, it can lead to nightmares with intellectual property.
Read More..>>Trademarks: When And How To Search And File Trademark Applications
Posted on February 16, 2008 - Filed Under Legal and Law | Leave a Comment
1. What is a Trademark?
A trademark can be any word, slogan, design, symbol, or even a color, smell, product configuration or a combination of these, used to identify the source of origin of particular goods and services. The trademark serves as a source identifier of your goods and services, to distinguish it from the goods and services of others. For example, Nike has a registered trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”). Their mark is used to distinguish their goods and services over other shoe companies. Nike actually owns several trademarks, including design marks as well, such as their swoosh symbol.
Copyright Is Dead! Long Live Copyright!
Posted on January 31, 2008 - Filed Under Legal and Law | Leave a Comment
Infringement. File sharing. Piracy. Counterfeiting. Plagiarism.
Whatever you call it, the theft of copyrighted material is just about impossible to control in our ever-expanding, ever-increasing digital age. In fact, there is a widely held belief that technology has made copyright impossible to enforce.
Take the entertainment industry, for example:
While all school children are taught the dangers of plagiarism of print materials when they write their first term papers, many of these same kids are some of the greatest offenders who believe that internet file sharing of their favorite music is their due simply for being fans of this or that rock or rap group.
Read More..>>Copyleft
Posted on January 3, 2008 - Filed Under Legal and Law | Leave a Comment
Copyleft is a licensing system, were copyright law is used to enforce the removal of restrictions on distributing copies and modified versions of a work (including software works). In copyleft licenses such as the GPL, the owner of a copyright permits others to distribute their work (in either unmodified or modified form) but only provided the distributor (licensee) also allows others receiving the work to exercise the same freedoms. For this reason copyleft licenses are also sometimes known as “reciprocal licenses”.
Read More..>>Copyright Problems For The Unwary Real Estate Developer
Posted on December 17, 2007 - Filed Under Legal and Law | Leave a Comment
Real estate lawyers take head. Waiting in the tall grass of your client’s real estate development project may be a thorny copyright issue that could cost your client all of the profit it earned on the project, and would probably buy you a serious malpractice claim.
In the course of developing a real estate project, whether it is a residential community or a commercial project, a central component of the project is the architectural plan. Unless the developer (and the developer’s counsel) are aware of how the Copyright laws affects what the developer can (and more importantly, can’t) do with the plan, the developer may find itself on the receiving end of a Copyright infringement lawsuit. Why? Because an architectural plan, as well as other architectural works, are protected under Copyright laws, and these laws govern who owns the plans and what can and can’t be done with the plan.
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