Pennsylvania Patents Legal Questions

Yes a recipe can be patented, but without knowing how similar it is to other recipes and how critical the presence and amount of the ingredients are, it is impossible to advise you as to the scope of protection that is likely to be obtainable.  You need to hire a patent attorney, advise him of all of the particulars and have him perform a patentability evaluation for you.... Read More

This is always a concern for authors or inventors - how to protect their ideas from being stolen if they disclose them to a third party. If you haven't already filed to protect your intellectual property before you disclose it, and they end up stealing it, you are in the position of having to show that you had the idea before them and they took it from you. This can be very difficult to prove. While nondisclosure agreements give you some avenue to pursue them through a breach of contract, the strongest position is if you file to protect the idea BEFORE you disclose it. You can register the copyright or file a provisional patent application, which establishes a date prior to your disclosure of your ownership. In the copyright arena, this is not always dispositive because copyright requires copying and the other party can still say they had the idea before you disclosed it to them. You should consult with someone in your state about getting a nondisclosure agreement and possibly protecting the idea before you disclose it.... Read More

Any use of a registered trademark without the express permission of the trademark owner is illegal. And while a purse design usually cannot be copyrighted, some designs are so unique or are so closely associated with a particular designer that they reach copyrightable status. So if a company is selling such purses and intentionally making improper use of a trademark, they'd better have a good defense attorney on hand.... Read More

You have not really provided enough information to be able to answer your question. However, I assume that what you intend is to purchase an existing product, take it apart, and use some or all of its parts to create an entirely different product that functions completely differently. If my assumption is correct, the owner of rights in the original product should have no rights in your new product.... Read More