| Federal Unfair Competition Law |
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| The law of unfair competition is primarily comprised of torts that cause an economic injury to a business through a deceptive or wrongful business practice. Unfair competition consists of two broad categories. First, the term "unfair competition" is sometimes used to refer only to those torts that are meant to confuse consumers as to the source of the product. The other category, "unfair trade practices," comprises all other forms of unfair competition. In this context, unfair competition does not refer to the economic harms involving monopolies and antitrust legislation. More... |
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| Regional Patent Offices |
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| The issuance of a patent by the United States Patent and Trademark Office provides patent protection to an inventor only within the United States. Because each country has its own patent laws, other countries do not provide patent protection to a U.S. patentee, nor does the United States provide patent protection to a foreign patentee. Originally, if a U.S. inventor wished to obtain patent protection in other countries, he or she was required to obtain patents from each country in which patent protection was desired, which obviously entailed substantial time and expense. Eventually, however, international cooperation helped streamline the process of obtaining patents in other countries in many cases. More... |
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| Copyright and the Commerce Clause |
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| The Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the authority "to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states." Starting at the time of the New Deal, the courts have read that clause expansively, saying that it gives Congress the authority to regulate virtually anything that affects interstate or foreign commerce. Federal trademark protection gets its authority from the Commerce Clause, and trademarks are protected as long as they are being used. More... |
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| Typeface as Trademark Subject Matter |
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| There are three types of protection that can be afforded to typefaces and fonts in addition to basic license agreements: trademark, design patent, and copyright. These are intended to keep non licensees from copying the fonts in some way and passing them off as original material. The trademark system is the weakest form of protection, allowing only the font name itself to be protected. This means that no one is allowed to use a currently existing typeface name for a new font, even if the fonts are completely unrelated. The design patent system is the strongest, but it is the most uncommon type of protection. More... |
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| The Doctrine of Intervening Rights |
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| A patent is issued for a fixed term--14 years for a plant patent; 20 years for other types--during which the patent holder has a right to exclude others from making, using, or selling the subject of the patent. There are, however, certain circumstances under which a patent claim may become ineffective for the purposes of enforcing exclusive patent rights against possible infringers. United States patent law allows a patentee to request a reissue of a patent, a procedure used when a patent as issued needs to be corrected. There may be an error in the specification that undermines the validity of the patent, or a patentee may determine that the scope of the patent as issued is narrower or broader than intended. As long as the error occurred without deceptive intention, the patentee may seek a reissue of the patent. More... |
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