Defending Intellectual Property Rights
As a business owner, you may have questions relating to what rights you have to protect various aspects of your business. Is your name protected? Can someone use your logo without your permission? What about intellectual property rights and product designs? From a legal standpoint, it’s important to understand procedures that are in place to protect your business, steps you should take and how to defend your intellectual property rights in general.
Important Steps and Protections
Below are a few steps to consider when looking for ways to protect the rights of your business.
Registering a Name
Dependent upon the name itself – whether it goes by the name of its owner or a created name – and its structure (partnership, corporation, LLC and so on), there are different steps to take to officially register a business’s name.
U.S. Patent and Trademarks under the USPTO
When you name your business, it’s easy to think that the name belongs to you and that it cannot be used in any other situation or by any other business owner. This may not be true. To protect your rights, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) offers three categories of registration:
- Trademarks: Trademarks protect words, names, symbols, colors and even sounds that make the products and services provided and created by one business unique. To register a trademark, search the USPTO database to be sure your desired mark is available then, register the mark in accordance with USPTO instructions for the ® symbol or establish common-law trademark rights with the ™ symbol. There are limits to when and where these symbols can be used, and what they pertain to. For this reason, working with a business attorney is an important step for protection.
- Patents: Patents are property rights that have specific end dates that exclude other individuals and businesses from making, using, offering or selling the products of inventors to others.
- Copyrights: Copyrights protect musicians, writers, artists and others involved in the creative process by giving them the rights to control the reproduction of their work(s) from the date the works are produced in tangible forms. More information is available through the U.S. Copyright Office.
Defending Your Rights
Just as critical as establishing rights is defending registered rights. With this in mind, it’s critical to:
- Protect registrations according to legal instructions and procedures. The rights of a business are only as effective as the way they are established and used. When you feel as though something that falls under your business’s protection has been misused, it’s important to first review the protections in place, to be sure there are no legal loopholes or special considerations that could cause protection to be revoked.
- Move quickly and efficiently. When action is not taken immediately, or within certain time periods, rights may not be enforced. Because of this, it’s critical to be on the lookout, and to take action as soon as you feel your business has been infringed upon.
Your business has certain rights, but, they are only as strong as the steps taken in the beginning to protect them. Because of this, it’s important to work with an experienced business lawyer, like Attorney Michael Hynum with Hynum Law in Harrisburg, PA from the start.
If you have any questions about what areas of your business are protected, or could use additional protection or are confused about what steps to take, set up a consultation today. We look forward to working with you.