Thursday, December 28, 2006

Ways of Protecting Ideas

We normally think of four ways to protect intellectual property.

Patents
Copyrights
Trademarks
Trade Secrets

If you want to protect your idea properties, you normally use one or more of those categories of law. This blog is mostly about patents. But you should understand a little about the other categories.

Copyright - Copyright law has to do with preventing the unauthorized copying of any work of authorship. Anyone can copy the ideas contained within a written piece of work. But the direct copying of the work is prohibited. Copyright is covered under federal law – the Copyright Act of 1976. Any document written after March 1, 1989 does not need to be registered to be protected by copyright law. You can simply place the copyright notice on your document. Copyrights can be registered in the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress though and if you have documents that are considered important you can both register them and use a Copyright notice on your documents. But again, there is no need to register the work with the Copyright Office or to seek any other kind of permission before using the copyright notice.
The copyright notice generally consists of the symbol © (the letter C in a circle), or the word "Copyright" followed by the year of first publication of the work; and the name of the owner of copyright in the work. Example: © 2006 Michael A. Ervin

Trademark – federal law governs trademark law. It governs the use of things like logos, symbols, etc. by a merchant to identify its goods and distinguish them from competitive goods. A related subject is Service Marks, which are used on services rather than goods. Marks (trade or service) rights come from just use of the mark. However if you really want to get the full protection of your mark you should register it. It is a good idea to engage a practicing trademark attorney to register the mark for you. A mark which is registered with the federal government should be marked with the ® symbol. Unregistered trademarks should be marked with a "tm", while unregistered service marks should be marked with a "sm".

Trade Secrets – state law governs trade secrets. A trade secret can be any information that derives independent economic value from not being generally known. Included can be formulas, techniques, blueprints, customer lists, etc. In any business the number of ideas protected by trade secret are usually much larger than those protected by patents. But many business owners are not familiar with how to protect their ideas with trade secret law.

If you need advice on protecting things under trade secret law you can contact a attorney in your state that is familiar with the laws of that state.

Ideas as Property

Any business has embedded in it many ideas. Ideas about how to manufacture, how to distribute, how to use products. Many of these are little but important ideas. Some are BIG ideas. The BIG ideas sometimes give us advantages over competitors

“How do I protect my ideas?” is one of the first questions you should ask? Ideas are property. They are not physical property. They are intellectual property. It's not easy to think about ideas as property, but for some businesses it's vital. To be successful in any venture you have to be sure that you protect the property you own in that business. Business people automatically think of protecting their physical property. That is why they purchase insurance. They sometimes forget to protect their intellectual property.

Where did patents come from?

Patents are not exactly a new idea. You may not realize that the U.S. Constitution mandated a patent system. Article I, section 8, the U.S. Constitution states:

Congress shall have power . . . To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.

You might think of a patent as a contract between you and the government. The contract gives you a limited monopoly in return for your duty to fully disclose your invention to the public. This has always been the fundamental idea behind patents – entice the inventor to disclose the invention by giving the inventor something in return. Thus the public eventually benefits because technology is spread around for all to use. The limited monopoly begins with the issuance of the patent and lasts for 20 years after the filing date of the patent.

Patents are a federal thing. There are no state patents. Governed by the Patent Act (35 U.S.C.), which established the United States Patent and Trademark Office (the USPTO).

About the Author

O.K. - who am I?

I have a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering and worked in all aspects of business in a 21 year career with DuPont. These included research, development, manufacturing, & business management.

After serving as VP of R&D for Imaging Systems and Medical Products for several years in Du Pont I took an early retirement and joined DTM Corporation in Austin Texas and served for 5 years helping to bring that company from a start-up status to an IPO in 1997. My role at DTM was VP Engineering and Manufacturing and I also served as the Intellectual Property Officer for the company.

I have hands on experience in directing both prosecution and litigation of patents in the United States and internationally. Areas of particular technical expertise include electro / optical / mechanical systems used for imaging and medical products, other hardware and software products related to capital equipment businesses, and the technologies of the chemical process industries.

I am a registered patent agent - United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Registration # 45,711

There - I got that out of the way!

Welcome

This blog is an attempt to communicate with small business owners (or individual inventors) who are interested in coming to a better understanding on how they should protect their intellectual property. The focus is on patents, although we cannot talk about patents only when questions of intellectual property come up.

I am a registered United States Patent Agent. I will tell you what that means later. There are already a number of blogs that get into a lot of detail on patents that are quite interesting for other patent agents and attorneys. But we are going to try to focus on small business people who only know enough about patents to be dangerous and attempt to help them to become less dangerous. We will try to regularly communicate ideas on why and how you can protect your ideas, and get into some of the many misconceptions about patent law.

Feel free to ask questions. I may even know the answers some of the time.

I hope to get to know all of the readers better. Feel free to communicate.

mike