Trademark & Copyright Law
Trademark Lawyers Bergen County NJ
The Law Offices of Donovan Bezer has intellectual property expertise and consistently provides useful advice, counsel and representation on various intellectual property (IP) issues. Our trademark lawyers in Bergen County, New Jersey specialize in the ever-changing world of internet and telecommunications technology. We safeguard our business clients’ IP rights from competitors and maximize the value of our clients’ IP. The firm represents clients in securing intellectual property protections at the state and federal levels as well as litigating and defending against claims of trademark and copyright infringement, unfair competition, trade secret, restrictive covenant, and employee piracy.
Trademark and Copyright Law
The firm of the Law Offices of Donovan Bezer has expertise in protecting your business from claims of infringement, and also from having your intellectual property stolen.
Understanding Intellectual Property
The two most common types of intellectual property are: (1) copyrights, which protect the rights of people who create literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other original works (like history tests, and software code); and (2) trademarks, which protect the use of a company's brand identity, logos, slogans, product names, and so forth. Copyrights are created whenever a creator set his/her idea into a physical medium, like writing a poem on paper, or typing computer code into a computer. Trademarks are created when you begin using the trademark in commerce, as long as you are the first to do so. Trademarks are words, phrases, colors, packaging, and symbols used to identify the source of a product or service. Copyrights are unique thoughts or expressions that a creator has written down.
A third type of intellectual property are trade secrets, like the recipe for Coca-Cola. Trade secrets must not be revealed by employees and others with whom the secret is shared. But the owner's main form of protection is to endeavor to keep the trade secret a secret. It cannot be registered with the Patent and Trademark Office, or with the Library of Congress.
Copyright protection exists as soon as the author reduces the idea to a physical form, but the penalties for violating a copyright are vastly augmented by registering the work with the Library of Congress. And trademarks should be registered in order to adequately protect them. Trademark registration is accomplished through the United States Patent and Trademark Office ("USPTO"), like patents. It is helpful to use an attorney to register a trademark because registration must be done correctly, the filer must thoroughly research the field to ensure that the trademark is not already registered, and the USPTO has many categories of trademarks, which makes registration confusing and complex.
SUING: For people and businesses that possess intellectual property (copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, patents), it is imperative that the owner of the intellectual property act at once after if discovers that its intellectual property ("IP") is being infringed upon. In some cases, the owner loses his/her right to challenge the use of their IP if they discover infringement and do not act immediately.
BEING SUED: A person or business who has been sued for infringement should hire a law firm that is aware of the multitude of defenses to infringement. Business owners and managers are very often shocked by how often an audit conducted by an IP law firm reveals that employees have unknowingly or innocently infringed on someone else's IP.
Lastly, it is important for an IP owner to realize that their IP can be sold, licensed (i.e. you allow someone limited use of the IP for a fee), or inherited by the heirs of an IP owner. But if registration is not kept up, IP can be lost through abandonment, improper licensing or assignment, or being too generic.