Trademark Attorney 1

Patents

A patent protects inventions through federal law. Inventions are your creative ideas for new products (articles of manufacture), machines, processes, methods, compositions of matter, ornamentation on products, or new plants. An improvement on an existing product may also be patented.

Utility patents protect the majority of these. To be patentable, your invention must be useful, novel and non-obvious. Design patents protect the ornamentation on devices. Plant patents protect new plant varieties.

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The case of Landor and Hawa International Ltd v Azure Designs Ltd (CA) [2006], involved a dispute over the design of a type of suitcase. The claimant company had been designing, importing and selling travel bags and suitcases since 1985. In June 2002, the managing director produced a design for an expanding section ( the Expander Design ) which was to be incorporated into hard shell-style suitcases.

Suitcases incorporating the Expander Design were then produced and sold in the UK and abroad.

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More frequently, many of my clients have been approaching me regarding the topic of patenting their unique business model, i.e. methods of doing business. So can a method of doing business be patentable? Yes. In 1998, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that the patent laws did extend to protect any method so long as it produced a useful, concrete and tangible result. The case spawned a slew of business method patents and Internet patents. The most cited example of business method patents has been Amazon’s One-Click” system, which allows a prior customer to place a new order without having to reenter

the customer s address and credit card data when placing an order online (U.S. Pat. No. 5,960,411). Some other examples of business method patents are: an internet auction system in which a user names the highest prices they are willing to pay and the first seller gets the purchase (U.S. Pat. No. 5,794,207); a method that gives a monetary incentive to citizens to view political messages on the Internet (U.S. Pat. No. 5,855,008).

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Trademarks are a form of intellectual property for a person or business. To protect your mark, you always should formally trademark it. This brings us to the subject of patience.

A mark is simple a distinctive name, brand or whatever for your person or business. At the risk of being sued to high heaven, the name Google is a trademark for a certain search engine. When it is mentioned or you read about it, you know exactly what it refers to. As a business becomes successful, it will almost always want to trademark its brand, logo or whatever.

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Patent numbers are issued sequentially, beginning with the number one. Patent number one was issued to Samuel Hopkins on July 31,1790. It took 75 years for the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to issue patent number 1,000,000. Patent number 7,000,000 was issued February 14, 2006. It took only seven years for the USPTO to move from issuance of patent number 6,000,000 to 7,000,000.

What does this mean? Simply, there is more creativity now that at any time in history. The old saw that there is nothing new is completely wrong. There has never been so many people and entities creating novel, unique products, technology and services, and so driven to commercialize these inventions. More patents

and entrepreneurs attempting to market their products is indicative that there is more competition for successful placement.

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