IP Law Legal Services in Chicago, Illinois
Branding is the public face of every business. As such establishing and maintaining a strong brand is crucial to a business’s success. Choosing, and securing rights in, a trademark(s) is essential to successful branding. Securing the rights in a trademark(s) is one of the best preventative and proactive actions you can take to protect your brand in the long run, rather than taking a reactionary approach and waiting for issues to arise. It is extremely important to conduct your due diligence and check the availability of a mark before you commit your resources to adopt the mark and building your brand around the potential mark. Retaining an experienced trademark lawyer will help ensure that these steps are competently and quickly undertaken.
Trademark Services are broad and may include any or all of the following:
Protecting your brand is more than just filing for a trademark. One must be vigilant in protecting their mark in order to maintain their rights. This includes monitoring for improper use of the trademark to initiating campaigns challenging pending trademark applications through opposition proceedings. Opposition proceedings are adversarial proceedings that take place before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (a department of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, a federal government administrative agency). Protecting your brand while navigating opposition campaigns requires customized strategies to preserve the applicant’s rights while also avoiding lengthy litigation and fees.
Filing a trademark starts with a branding decision. Ask yourself, what is the particular word, symbol, tone or other source identifier with which you want to associate your goods and/or services? Prosecuting trademark applications before the USPTO is generally more or less complicated depending on the mark for which trademark protection is being sought.
Should you choose to proceed with your application, even with an appropriate clearance search the USPTO may issue an office action against your application. Usually this is a non-final notice outlining any problems with your trademark application, usually this is due to a potential likelihood of confusion with an existing trademark. This allows us an opportunity to show how your mark is sufficiently distinct and should be awarded protection.
The trademark renewal process occurs after the mark registers on either the Principal or Supplemental Register. Generally, a trademark owner must formally declare that it is still using the mark in commerce and thus the registration of that mark should be maintained. The trademark renewal process is periodic: first renewal takes place between the 5th and 6th year anniversaries of the mark’s registration and thereafter, between each successive 9th and 10th year anniversaries.
Protecting your brand is more than just filing for a trademark. One must be vigilant in protecting their mark in order to maintain their rights. This includes monitoring for improper use of the trademark to initiating campaigns challenging pending trademark applications through opposition proceedings. Opposition proceedings are adversarial proceedings that take place before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (a department of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, a federal government administrative agency). Protecting your brand while navigating opposition campaigns requires customized strategies to preserve the applicant’s rights while also avoiding lengthy litigation and fees.
A work of art, your personal expression, your literary masterpiece, or even a fully compiled code, any “original work of authorship,” so long as the work possesses even a minimal degree of creativity, it is deserving of copyright protection once in a tangible medium. At the completion of any such work, its author already enjoys copyright protection. That protection, however, is going to leave the author open to liability as it does not hold the same value that it could without a copyright registration obtained from the Copyright Office. A formal registration allows the copyright holder to enforce the copyright in court. Without that threat of potential enforcement, the copyright holder risks having their copyright infringed upon.
Fortunately, the copyright registration process is simple, inexpensive, and relatively quick. Likely, a copyright registration certificate will arrive within a few months of submitting the application, sooner if you choose to pay an additional fee for expedited processing. While note necessary, making use of an experienced copyright lawyer to handle this process for you will guarantee the process is being undertaken properly.
Have a great idea for a new business, a revolutionary product, an improved product, a work of art, the perfect song?
The first step to making your idea a reality is to protect it. Good ideas can be extremely valuable and unfortunately, thanks to the internet and other global communication methods, the expressions of those ideas can be instantly and easily accessible. I’m sure we’re all familiar with the horror stories of having your intellectual property “misappropriated” or just plain stolen, but that doesn’t have to happen to you. Zephyr Law can provide you with everything you need to properly protect your IP. We can help:
Zephyr Law supports Illinois businesses with expert licensing agreement and transaction law services. More information coming soon, contact us today to learn more.
Zephyr Law supports Illinois businesses with expert intellectual property (IP) monitoring and enforcing law services. More information coming soon, contact us today to learn more.
Branding is the public face of every business. As such establishing and maintaining a strong brand is crucial to a business’s success. Choosing, and securing rights in, a trademark(s) is essential to successful branding. Securing the rights in trademark(s) and copyrights are one of the best preventative and proactive actions you can take to protect your brand in the long run, rather than taking a reactionary approach and waiting for issues to arise. It is extremely important to conduct your due diligence and check the availability of a mark before you commit your resources to adopt and build your brand around the potential mark. Retaining an experienced trademark lawyer will help ensure that these steps are competently and quickly undertaken.
Protecting your brand is more than just filing for a trademark. One must be vigilant in protecting their mark in order to maintain their rights. This includes monitoring for improper use of the trademark to initiating campaigns challenging pending trademark applications through opposition proceedings. Opposition proceedings are adversarial proceedings that take place before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (a department of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, a federal government administrative agency). Protecting your brand while navigating opposition campaigns requires customized strategies to preserve the applicant’s rights while also avoiding lengthy litigation and fees.
A work of art, your personal expression, your literary masterpiece, or even a fully compiled code, any “original work of authorship,” so long as the work possesses even a minimal degree of creativity, it is deserving of copyright protection once in a tangible medium. At the completion of any such work, its author already enjoys copyright protection. That protection, however, is going to leave the author open to liability as it does not hold the same value that it could without a copyright registration obtained from the Copyright Office. A formal registration allows the copyright holder to enforce the copyright in court. Without that threat of potential enforcement, the copyright holder risks having their copyright infringed upon.
Fortunately, the copyright registration process is simple, inexpensive, and relatively quick. Likely, a copyright registration certificate will arrive within a few months of submitting the application, sooner if you choose to pay an additional fee for expedited processing. While note necessary, making use of an experienced copyright lawyer to handle this process for you will guarantee the process is being undertaken properly.
Copyright 2021 @ Zephyr Law . All rights reserved.
Copyright 2021 @ Zephyr Law . All rights reserved.
