Arizona Intellectual Property Legal Questions

If your school identifies this activity as cheating, your scholastic record could be at risk. Schools have their own fiefdoms with broad power to discipline students according to their own codes of conduct. The other concern would be copyright infringement. Some standardized achievement exam-makers have kept others from copying their exam questions for prep courses through copyright law. Copying and slightly modifying the problem could be copyright infringement. Those are the issues that occur to me.   Good luck, Todd... Read More

It is legal to buy a product, repackage it, and sell it. Under patents, the legal right is defined by the Exhaustion doctrine. Under trademarks and copyrights, the legal right is defined by the First Sale doctrine. You can read about either on Wikipedia, which will give you a better sense of whether these doctrines apply to your situation. Without knowing all of the facts of your situation, I cannot tell you if there is something else you are doing that may not be legal. Similarly, I am not sure if 'fuel cleaning products' have any special regulations regarding sales, so the answer is limited to saying the manufacturer of the existing fuel cleaning product would not have any legal action against you once you bought the product from it. Good luck, Todd... Read More

This doesn't sound like a question, it sounds like a dilemna. You could agree to what your boss wants. You could convince your boss to do what you want. Either option is acceptable under the law. If he wants to build the business around your recipes, you might even consider some form of a partnership with this owner - a percentage of the business for control of the recipes. It is all acceptable if the two of you can agree on terms, just make sure the language of the agreement reflects your terms and have the agreement reviewed by counsel to make sure your interests have been protected. Good luck, Todd... Read More

Let's say you are walking down the street one day. Some young guy dressed in shorts and a t-shirt pulls up along the curb next to you in a new BMW, jumps out, hands you the keys and says, "Here, you look like you could use a ride," before hurrying off on foot. Do you have the right to drive the car home and file a transfer of title with the DMV? Or do you assume something is wrong and the young guy did not have the right to give you the vehicle? You don't know anything about the site license, so it is hard to define whether you have could have rights. You have not mentioned if you are a substitute teacher or volunteer at the school or some similar relationship that might require you have the software to fulfill a school related duty. Or why this teacher gave you the software. Absent any legitimate explanation for why you could believe you deserve rights to the public school's software, I would assume that something is wrong and the teacher did not have the rights to give you the software.... Read More

Copyrights belong to the author of the work. In film and photography, the author of the work is the photographer or director, if there is a person controlling both the photographer/cameraman and the subjects of the work. Copyright can only be assigned by written assignment. If you are the author of some of these works, allowing your ex to have possession is not the same has giving her copyrights in the works. You could still have an action if she copies the works without your express written consent. Taking an action simply to do harm to another person (physical/emotional/reputation/etc) is actionable under tort law. Tort laws vary from state to state, but if she takes action for the clear purpose of causing you injury, you probably have a tort action against her. Similarly, if she has threatened to post/publish them, you could get an injunction to keep her from publishing them and/or to have them destroyed. I have no idea how the state bar would handle the matter if you brought it to their attention.  ... Read More

Your situation is a good example of the problem with verbal agreements. They are very difficult to enforce because once there is a dispute, of course each side is saying that they agreed on something different. There is good news and bad news in your situation. First, as the person who took the photographs, you are the owner of the copyright in the photographs and you control who can copy, publicly display, distribute and make derivative works of your photographs. You could enforce your copyright against the model to stop her from displaying your photographs on her sites. The problem you could have is that she may claim she had an "implied license" to use them and then it would be up to a court to decide if she did or not. Also, you must register your copyright with the United States Copyright Office to be able to legally enforce your copyright. If you have not done that yet, you cannot claim "statutory" damages or attorney's fees for infringement should you be successful in an infringement action. As far as displaying the photos on your website, the problem you can have is the model's right of privacy/publicity. She has a right in the use of her likeness to promote other people's businesses. This right varies from state to state so you need to find out in your state if she can stop you. In short, neither one of you may end up with the right to do anything with those photographs without objection of the other. Next time, get these rights sorted out in writing before you take the photographs!... Read More

You are going to find it very difficult to obtain advice from an attorney in how to conduct an illegal business in order not to get caught. Some trademark owners are extremely sophisticated regarding the techniques necessary to track down infringers from overseas. If you receive funds from illegal activities, you can be discovered and subjected to damages. Although this is not legal advice, you are strongly discouraged from engaging in this business.... Read More

The answer is "it depends." In the case of the material at this web site, there are copyright issues covered by the site owner's terms and conditions. If the portion of the dialog you are copying is relatively small compared with the whole, it is possible that you might rely on the doctrine of "fair use" in doing the copying. The availability of a fair-use defense is always fact-dependent and cannot be assumed as a matter of course.... Read More

Magazines generally use a simple form of agreement with the author. The author either (a) assigns the copyright in the work to the magazine, or (b) grants the magazine "first North American serial rights" (or similar rights as appropriate, which seems to be the model you contemplate). The model used depends to a great extent on the magazine's business model, how much negotiation "clout" it has with authors, and how likely it is the authors will be able to re-sell their works in a non-serial medium. The agreement will also usually provide for a flat fee for the author, as well as contain some warranties by the author regarding originality, no previous publication, non-infringement, etc. We represents authors and publishers in my office, and we'd be happy to discuss this subject with you. You should expect to spend about $1,000 or possibly a bit less on this kind of legal work.... Read More