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Received an email recently from John Tredennick, CEO & Founder of Merlin Search Technologies, Inc and thought I’d share with readers,
By Malcolm Trotter, global education and training professional In the pursuit of career ambitions, investing in oneself and securing credible
While our mission is to be one of the world’s leading resources on law, digital and legal technology, helping the
Product liability attorneys play a crucial role in securing the compensation you deserve. Imagine this: you’ve just purchased a new
Finding yourself in a car accident can be a harrowing experience. In the midst of dealing with injuries, insurance claims,
By Amanda Hamilton, Patron of the National Association of Licensed Paralegals (NALP) Paralegals play a vital role in law firms,
The approach taken in Navitaire was reaffirmed in the recent decision in Nova v Mazooma Games, where it was similarly held that the reproduction of the look and feel of an existing program in original source code did not infringe copyright in the original program. However, both Navitaire and Nova concern programs with high levels of abstraction and may be limited to their facts. It is therefore entirely possible that the “look and feel” of a program in a future case may be protected if there are less abstract concepts and closer similarities between programs. Thus, we may not have seen the end of “look and feel” protection through copyright.
WardblawG uses one of the most common types of Creative Commons. See the CCL summary page and the full licence for more information. There are other different types of Creative Commons that may be considered.
By saying you grant a certain type of Creative Commons Licence, you are doing just that: no fancy legal documents required, because they’ve already been drafted for you. In case you haven’t discovered by now, WardblawG is a massive fan of freeing up information and keeping it simple. Welcome to FOI 2.0?
Next, you might need to pull your hair out over getting copyright protection for your written work. But wait a minute, no you don’t! Copyright is granted to you automatically by the nice people that drafted and agreed the international copyright treaties. Such copyright protection exists for anything you write, generally provided that it is your own material. To avoid plagiarism and copyright breach for using other people’s work, consider referencing them or getting consent from them first: it’s just like being back at university writing thousands of words that nobody will ever read; unless YoublawG them.
As Forest Gump might say, that’s all WardblawG has to say about that.
A branch of copyright and particularly relevant for web 2.0, Creative Commons Licences are the subject of Chapter 5 of this series, which follows this post.
If you take one thing away from this, it should be this practical but general word of advice:
If your business and its model are analogous to another successful and well-protected business and if your brand name is unique, not in the dictionary, not an industry word and not confusingly similar to another business, then take inspiration from the trade mark applications of that other successful business, but do consider every application on its own merits; and
If you are in any doubt about trade mark registrability, research further or seek professional advice from a lawyer, brand protector or trade mark agent. In WardblawG’s experience, trade mark agents are most useful when registrability of your brand as a trade mark is clearly problematic, when you need to overcome objections or field queries from an examiner, or when you have a large portfolio of trade marks to register and maintain.
Intellectual Property (“IP”) As every business knows or should know, you must develop and protect your IP. For various reasons,