California Intellectual Property Legal Questions

If a company owns a copyright in a work and you use that work without permission, you have violated their copyright. Even after the work has been taken down, the offense has been committed. They can file a complaint in court to collect damages from the offense. To collect, they will need to have a registered copyright on the work. I would ask for the registration number of the work, which you can then verify through the US Copyright Office at copyright.gov. If they have registered in advance of your offense, they will have the possibility to sue for statutory damages (which could easily be $780) plus their attorney fees.... Read More

I experienced something like this 7-8 years ago. We had an employment link on our web site, identifying that we were open to lateral hires and the qualifications needed for a lateral hire. Then we started receiving communications from folks who had found the add on a job listing aggregation site, one focused on legal jobs. I have never looked into whether copying and reposting these job listings is legal. Copyright protection requires a work with a modicum of creativity. The brevity and functionality of most job postings should not meet that criteria, although the bar has been set so low that it has been debated whether phonebook listings have a modicum of creativity. All I can offer here is that it is a debatable issue. More to the point, I think the question becomes, "what is the harm?" To get statutory damages, someone will need to have registered their copyright with the Copyright Office (only discussing US law here) within 3 months of the job posting. Someone who is aware of your site and wants to stop you, could post a creative job ad, wait for you to copy it, and register it in a timely manner to pursue an infringement action against you that could be worth 4-5 figures (my guesstimate, not the limit of the law). You may also have a fair use defense, as the posting is factually and not intended to compete with the job offeror. But why? Anyone posting an ad is trying to get it distributed to individuals looking for employment. Your site would promote their interests. Litigation is a hassle. If no one takes offense, then you'd be safe. If someone does take offense and you immediately take down their ad and promise not to post their ads in the future, they would likely be satisfied. I can't give you legal advice or legal conclusions because I haven't looked at the issue on point, but these are my thoughts on the subject.... Read More

It would be copyright infringement to copy a copyrighted design and place it on anything. I would question whether you are copying the entire design, a significant portion of the design, or a minor element as there is some level where the copying is so insignificant so as not to be actionable (similar to using a quote from a book), but you have not suggested in the question that you are using anything less than the full copyrighted design.... Read More

The short answer is NO. There are two reasons why this guy has no copyright to enforce.  First, individual word and short phrase are not considered to have sufficient originality to be copyrightable, and secondly, for anything to be copyrightable, it has to be original and for you to have infringed a copyright, you would have had to have copied it. Thus, if this is a 500 year old term and you adopted it from the ancient source, even if this guy had a copyright (which cannot as noted) you would not have infringed it if you did not know of his version and therefore did not copied it.... Read More

Ownership of the bear, in and of itself, does not give you any ownership rights to the intellectual property associated with the bear. Just like if you owned one of the original Beatles albums, you would not own their copyrights or trademarks. There should be special value associated with owning this bear, but it does not include the associated intellectual property.... Read More

A car title is not intellectual property. Intellectual property is patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets. I would try asking the question again in 'litigation' or 'contracts' (even though the contract may be no more than a gift). The law often looks dubiously upon a 'gift', particularly when one party disputes the item was gifted, but I'm not sure how a court would typically view this transaction.... Read More

The US now has a 'first-to-file' patent system. Whoever files a patent application first on that idea, maintains the patent application (or continuity), and obtains a patent has the right to keep others from making the technology. There are exceptions for businesses that were making the patented product before the first patent application was filed, but you are not suggesting that fact exists in your case. Until the patent issues, the patent owner does not have any right/ability to file a patent infringement complaint against someone else making their invention. However, once the patent issues, they can stop you from making their product and, if the claims are the same as the patent application that published, they could sue an infringer for making the patented product before the patent was issued.... Read More

It is not clear to me what trademark you registered. Specifically, it is possible for you to register just your company name (a word mark without the logo) and get the registration approved by submitting a specimen as you have described it. When you received your registration certificate, it contained an image of your trademark and that image defines your registration. For purposes of my answer, I am assuming your registration matches your specimen. You should only use the circle R symbol on representation of your trademark that include everything contained in the registration as it appears in the registration. The Trademark Office treats little alterations as different trademarks. When renewing trademarks, I have had the Trademark Office reject specimens that have words in quotes, an added hyphen, an added space, and different shading within letters as well as relocated objects (e.g., logo relative to the words). If it doesn't match, just use a superscript TM. The superscript TM gives notice that you consider the mark to be your property, but does not identify the mark as registered. The circle R gives notice that you consider the mark to be your property and it is registered. If someone else were to use the variation on your registration as you described it, they would likely be found infringing, but that doesn't mean that you can declare it is registered if it doesn't match the registration. Good luck, Todd... Read More

The issue you are raising is called a "Right of Publicity". Most states have right of publicity laws and I would expect California to be chief among them. A "right of publicity" is an individual's right to keep their image from being used for commericial gain. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/right_of_publicity For instance, I cannot sell salsa with Tom Cruise's picture on it without his permission because it implies endorsement and he has a right to control his endorsement business. I could also not have a local play with his likeness on an advertising poster implying that he would be in the show (assuming he was not in the show) because that would deceive consumers. To succeed in this type of action, my understanding is that you would need to be able to show that consumers/patrons of the show were confused and/or the producers of the show benefited financially from having your image in the poster (e.g., patrons recognized you). As one of the entertainment centers of the world, California right of publicity laws may have advanced further or be more nuanced than I am describing. If you have a right of publicity action in California, you can file suit in state court to enjoin the company from continuing to use the poster and/or reimburse you for any financial losses you can demonstrate.... Read More

The question lacks sufficient facts.  Is it legal for me to store my login credentials for various websites in a password management program, of course.  And it is legal for the program to store them with my consent. Is it legal for Yahoo to store my Facebook login with my consent.  Sure why not, all you are doing is facilitating linking of the two websites. Can you be more specific if you have another question in mind.... Read More

Not sure how you would create a game that already exists, and assume what you mean is that you physical produce an actual game that your read about.  However, you have not provided enough information about the game for a proper answer to be given. Is the game one that has been around, for example, for a century or only a year? Was this game ever commercially produced?  Was the game attributed to a particular person or company? Information of this type is needed to determine if the game (or aspects of it) might be covered by copyright or patent. Until it is determined what might be protected by copyright or patent protection, the question of the type of changes that may be needed cannot be answered.... Read More

Register the copyright in them with the United States Copyright Office. You will probably have to file a separate application for each film or sketch, but the filing fee is fairly minimal. You will have to upload a file for each film or sketch to the Copyright Office as a "deposit," but that file does not become publicly available. In fact, no one can get the file from the Copyright Office except in very limited situations. Go to www.copyright.gov and check out the FAQs. They are very helpful on how to register the copyright.... Read More

The situation you describe falls under the "fair use" doctrine, which allows someone to use all or part of a copyrighted work without having to get the permission of the copyright owner. This doctrine is very narrow and is always dependent on exactly what you are doing and exactly what works you are using, including how much of those works you are using. "Fair use" can be permitted in the situations of commentary, search engines, criticism, news reporting, research, teaching, library archiving and scholarship, but even in these situations use of another person's work as a "fair use" is not without restrictions. One of the primary factors that works AGAINST "fair use" is whether your use is commercial in nature. Unfortunately there is a very high likelihood that your use would not be a "fair use" and you therefore would have to get permission to use the clips. Since "fair use" is so dependent on the precise facts, you should definitely consult with someone knowledgeable in this field before you make your online course available to see whether you might be inviting an allegation of copyright infringement.... Read More

First, you are referring to the Gold Labeling Act of 1976 which affects, gold, silver and platinum, not titanium. The decision to trademark has benefits totally different from the material you are using. It tells the public the source of the goods, and as you establish a reputation for quality, the quality. It has nothing to do with the name of your company unless you chose the trademark to be your company name. If you are doing foreign trade with China without a lawyer, you will need a lawyer sooner or later. Better sooner.... Read More

If the name is used on a good in interstate commerce or international commerce with the US, you could file for trademark registration. If it is not used, it cannot be registered, and names cannot be "locked up" without use Except with an Intent to Use mark. See www.uspto.gov to learn more about trademarks.... Read More