California Patents Legal Questions

This is an excellent question! The first question that a potential funding source will ask you is "Do you have Patent Protection?" A Patent Attorney will seek to protect all intellectual property rights (Patents, Copyrights, Trade Secrets, and Trademarks) to your technology (both U.S. and foreign rights), if you are interested in global protection. In addition, the Patent Attorney will obtain all of the patent rights that you are entitled to, at an affordable price. If you are seeking to launch, the Patent Attorney can direct you to resources specializing in developing business plans and licensing your technology or otherwise finding a funding source, but these latter functions are generally beyond the Patent function. Good luck and I hope that this helps.... Read More

Trademarks are the "brand name" of goods. Think - Ford cars & trucks. Tide laundry detergent. Budweiser beer. Copyright protect original artistic creations - books, movies, songs, plays, etc. Copyright does NOT protect slogans. In order to protect your new slogan as a trademark - you need to use it commercially for a product. Good luck.... Read More

You don't provide enough details to answer this question. However, if you submitted the patent application yourself, without any help from a patent attorney or patent agent, my first two guesses would be that a) your idea is not patentable under current law or b) your application was not filled out properly. You can appeal the patent examiner's decision but there's no guarantee that the Board will reverse the examiner. Talk to a patent attorney about what to do next.... Read More

An invention can only be patented by the inventor (or his assignee). As for the content, you can include prior art in the written description or drawings. If the drawings and/or description have been published, they will be prior art. A drawing of something that is prior art must be labeled as such.... Read More

First, copyrights are only infringed by copying, so if you having copied, e.g., a flow image that you put on the straps, you cannot infringe the copyright of a flower image that you never saw and just happens to be similar. Copyrights fo not cover sturctural features of orthotic sandals/heels/flats nor do they cover the ornamental appears of sturctural features of orthotic sandals/heels/flats which are covered by patents and design patents respectively. You need to contact a patent attorney to arrange to have a search of unexpire patents and design patents to see if any of them would cover the sandals/heels/flats that you intend to sell.... Read More

My website has a lot of information under the FAQs as to what is involved in filing a patent.  I also just did an audiocast that should answer a lot of your.  I am engineer with a degree in biomedical engineering and computer science & I'm a patent attorney. Here's a link to the audiocast.  I'm sure it'll help.  If you want to take the next step towards retaining an attorney, here's a link with the options we have. -Paul Protect it! IP Contact info... Read More

Dear Lesley,   In general, you do not want an answer to the question "Do we infringe" on a public forum. For a variety of reasons. If that is all they have, they don't have a US patent. You can go to USPTO.gov and look up that publication number. The application is pending and no patent has issued. Until the patent issues, an actionable claim does not exist. They may have a patent in the Netherlands. Good luck, Todd... Read More

I am sorry to report that neither Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act 15 U.S.C. § 1125(d) or the ICANN Domain Name Dispute procedure (UDRP) will be of any use to you since you have no rights that pre-date the domain name registration and the domain name holder clearly could not have had knowledge of you at the time he registered the domain name. Also, company names are not trademarks unless used as such so the mere registration of an LLC with your state corporation agency would not give you any rights in the name as a trademark. In fact, there are 100 federal trademark registrations or pending applicaitions of which the letters "KD" form all or part of the trademark including at least one for "Entertainment services" (I have assumed that "productions" involves services of this type) so that I suggest that you find another name, especially if you want the name of your company to be the domain name of your website.... Read More

The LLC is not a trademark, it is a form of business organization. If you are using a name and/or mark to identify services and that name is confusingly similar to a (preexisting) trademark, the preexisting trademark owner may require that you cease using the confusingly similar mark. Deciding whether there is requisite confusion depends on the nature of your product(s)/services, the region of extant use, the (previously) trademarked product(s)/services, and the prominence of the trademark in the region(s) of use. Infringement may also depend on whether your and/or the other trademark(s) are registered (which gives a trademark national scope). You probably need an attorney to help sort these things out for you.... Read More

The percentage of claims that are initially filed that make it into the resulting patents, by itself, means nothing. I would be more concerned if all of the claims that are initially filed that make it into the patent since that means that they are drafted to narrowly. Short of that, the application histories would have to be examined relatively closely to determine, e.g., why claims were rejected and whether problems that arose could have been easily avoided, among other things.... Read More

The inventors assigned all of their ownership interest. http://assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/q?db=pat&qt=pat&reel=&frame=&pat=8671381&pub=&asnr=&asnri=&asne=&asnei=&asns= By assigning all of their interest, they reserved none of their rights. Freescale owns the rights to the patent and Citibank own a security interest in the rights to the patent. Aren't there better things to do in California than fight over this? Regards, Todd... Read More

I can understand your difficulty reading the patent claims. They are convoluted, even for patent claims. A patent gives you the right to keep anyone else from making/using/selling the claimed matter. There is no requirement that an infringer 'copied' the method/apparatus from the patent owner and independently conceived products can still infringe patents. I note that this patent has a filing date in 2011. It is possible, if you started your site earlier, that you may have rights that pre-date the patent holders rights and even that your prior activity may invalidate the patent. Otherwise, you need to show you do not infringe or that the patent is invalid. To show you do not infringe, you need to find one element within each of the independent patent claims that is not contained within your site. To invalidate the patent, you need to show that other people have done what he is claiming prior to 2011.  Alternatively, you could show that prior to 2011, people were doing exactly what your site is doing, which would necessitate a finding of non-infringement or invalidity. Patent infringement suits are a mess. It could take a patent attorney a week to analyze all of the information necessary to advise you what your best course of action is. Good luck, Todd... Read More

You're correct that the Popular Science article you've cited represents prior art with respect to the ClampTite tool. Even so, it is assumed that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) considered not only this prior art reference but a number of others disclosing tools similar to the ClampTite tool you've mentioned. In fact, the patent application from which the ClampTite patent (US5148577) was granted, which indicates E. Ray Silvey as the original inventor, references several earlier patents covering similar tools. For example, a patent granted in 1911 to Simon Schlangen (US1012282) discloses a hose-tie wrench. Others include US899657 in 1908, US1072301 in 1913, US1453940 in 1923, and US2421878 in 1947. In all, 20 patents were cited in the E. Ray Silvey patent application, each covering tools providing a similar function as the ClampTite tool. The original Silvey patent, though, was granted in 1992, which means that it has expired. However, Silvey's daughter was granted a much more recent patent in 2006. As such, it maintains several additional years of exclusivity, which prohibits others from making or selling products that infringe upon those rights granted by this patent. Even though a patent exists covering aspects of the ClampTite tool, this doesn't mean that an inventor cannot design around this patent. For example, an inventor may create a tool that functions more efficiently or design a tool functioning in a similar way but has a different appearance. An experienced patent attorney can help you determine if your idea for a wire/clamp tool is patentable in light of the prior art that exists. Pursuing the making and selling of your idea without patent counsel may expose you to potential litigation.... Read More

Given the length of time since the registration was allowed to lapse, it may be safe to assume that the trademark is no longer in use. Furthermore, since the USPTO considers such an abandoned registration to be available for registration by another, you would be able to register the trademark for your own goods/services, assuming that no one else does so before you or is not using the same mark for similar goods/services even if they have not sought register the mark (someone who commenced use before you could seek to oppose your attempt to register the mark even if they have not registered it).... Read More

You need to review your consulting agreement with this client to see if there is any mention of copyright assignment with respect to your notes. Any agreement that you may have signed will be determinative of the outcome here. If client?s counsel did not have you assign patent and copyrights, then the copyright in a work is owned by the work?s creator (you). The client has a legitimate interest in establishing the date of invention for these Patents, so the client may need to negotiate with you to obtain copies of your notes. You may need to retain the assistance of counsel in this matter.... Read More

As a consultant - you were not an employee of the company. Otherwise - the company could have an ownership claim to your notes. Since your consulting contract failed to include materials developed by you which are protected by the US Copyright Laws - you retain ownership of your notes. You should be free to keep them or sell them to the company. Under the Copyright Laws: Copyright protection subsists from the time the work is created in fixed form. (Work = your written notes.) The copyright in the work of authorship immediately becomes the property of the author who created the work. (You are the sole author of your notes.) Only the author or those deriving their rights through the author can rightfully claim copyright. (Absent an agreement regarding your notes - they are yours.)... Read More