| Cartoons and Comic Strips as Copyright Subject Matter |
| The copyright law of the United States provides for copyright protection of literary and artistic works. Copyright protection begins automatically when a work is first created in a fixed form. Cartoons and comic strips are among the types of works of authorship protected by copyright. This protection extends to any copyrightable pictorial or written expression contained in the work. This protection does not extend to the title or general theme for a cartoon or comic strip or to the general idea or name for the characters depicted. Copyright protection to creators and/or owners of graphic characters under the 1976 Copyright Act is strong but of limited duration. More... |
| The Basics of Patents |
| What is a patent?More... |
| Economic Espionage Act of 1996 |
| The Economic Espionage Act of 1996 (EEA) provided a broader definition of what constitutes a "trade secret" and what constitutes trade secret theft, effectively replacing the 1948 Trade Secrets Act, which was limited to prosecution of federal employees. The EEA also was passed so as to serve as a universal trade secret theft act, overriding various trade secret acts instituted by individual states.More... |
| Business Methods As Patents |
| It was the growing use of computers in business that forced the courts to decide once and for all whether business methods could be patented, and indeed, many patented business methods involve the use of computers to do business on the Internet, sometimes referred to as "e-commerce." The aftermath of the 1998 court decision was a flood of business-method and e-commerce patent applications, which quickly created problems for the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). If an invention has been used in commerce or described in literature for more than a year before a patent application for that invention is filed, it cannot be patented because under the rules of the USPTO, the invention is no longer new. Because of the vast amount of literature that might reveal that an invention is not new (called the "prior art"), it was very difficult for patent examiners, particularly those not well-versed in computer technologies, to review all of the prior art to determine whether an invention was in fact new, particularly in a field that is experiencing such rapid change and progress. Accordingly, the USPTO has been widely criticized for issuing business-method and e-commerce patents for business methods that have already been in extensive use or that are obvious extensions of existing business methods, forcing the USPTO to adjust to a rapidly evolving patent landscape. More... |
| Choosing a Protectable Trademark |
| The spectrum of trademark distinctiveness goes from fanciful marks, which are very protectable, to generic trademarks, which are not protectable. In trademark usage, words can be classified according to the degree of their distinctiveness. The right to protection of a trademark comes from its use to identify the product. When choosing a protectable trademark it should be highly distinctive. Choose trademarks that are fanciful, arbitrary, or suggestive because they are considered distinctive enough to function as trademarks.More... |
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