Silverberg, Goldman and Bikoff, L.L.P., lawyers in Washington, DC, District Of Columbia

Nicknames as Trademark Subject Matter

A trademark is occasionally varied by the public in both speech and written usage to an abbreviation of or a nickname for a company's name or trademark. A company can claim trademark ownership of such a name even if the company neither created it nor publicized it. This protection coincides with the rationale behind trademark law, which is protecting against consumer confusion. Sometimes the public modifies recognized names and marks either by shortening a longer mark for purposes of convenience, such as the use of "Coke" for a Coca-Cola beverage or by adopting a nickname because of the appearance of a product and/or a desire to colloquialize a trademark, such as "Bug" for the Volkswagen Beetle automobile. A company can secure trademark protection for an abbreviation, acronym, or nickname conferred by the public if it can show that the purchasing public associates that nickname with the company or identifies the company as the source of products bearing that nickname. The company may prevent another entity from using a mark that is confusingly similar to the new term even though the company itself has not made public use of it. More...

Distribution Rights

The distribution right grants to the copyright holder the exclusive right to make a work available to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership or by rental, lease, or lending. The owner of a copyright has the right to give away, sell, or withhold any material embodiment of his or her work. In essence, this is the right to control publication of a work because publication without distribution of copies is meaningless. This right allows the copyright holder to prevent the distribution of unauthorized copies of a work. In addition, the right allows the copyright holder to control the first distribution of a particular authorized copy. However, the distribution right is limited by the "first sale doctrine," which states that after the first sale or distribution of a copy, the copyright holder can no longer control what happens to that copy. More...

Patent Claims and the Definiteness Requirement

An applicant for a patent must include in the specification accompanying the application for the patent one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his or her invention. Patent claims serve two functions. First, they define the invention for the purpose of applying the conditions of patentability, the statutory bars, and the disclosure requirements. Second, they define the invention for the purpose of determining infringement.More...

Works Made for Hire under the 1976 Copyright Act

Under the 1976 Copyright Act as amended, a work is protected by copyright from the time it is created in a fixed form. The copyright immediately becomes the property of the author who created it. Generally, the person who created a work is the author of that work but there is an exception to that rule. Where a work is "made for hire," the employer, not the employee, is considered the author.More...

Trademark Priority

In the United States, subject to one exception, trademark rights arise from use in commerce, regardless of whether or not the mark is registered. The first user of a mark generally takes priority over all subsequent users with respect to use of the mark in that market. More...