Orlando Intellectual Property Attorneys

Protecting Our Valued Clients’ Rights

If you’re a software developer, author, filmmaker, or the owner of a business that creates products, designs, or unique formulas or processes, you are the owner of intellectual property. But to retain its value, you need to take positive steps to protect your property. The attorneys at NeJame Law are highly experienced in intellectual property protection, licensing, and litigation.

Our Orlando intellectual property attorneys are veteran litigators in disputes arising out of business ownership and transactions and are able to handle any court action that may be required to protect your interests. We can also help you determine if a copyright or trademark is appropriate and can assist you in obtaining the proper protection for your inventions.

Contact us online or by phone at (407) 500-0000 to learn more about intellectual property and whether you have something that needs protecting. All of our lawyers, including founding attorney Mark NeJame, are passionate about defending the rights of our clients.

Elements of Intellectual Property

We’ve all heard of intellectual property, but few really know what it is. Do you own any? Is it protected? Intellectual property is many things. It’s the intangibles. IP can be ideas, designs, formulas, codes, programs, databases, stories, articles, songs, slogans, or symbols. We’ve all heard the buzzwords “copyright,” “trademark,” and “patent.” These are just some of the ways in which intellectual property is protected.

Patent Protection

In the legal world, a patent is what’s known as a negative right. If the United States Patent and Trademark Office grants your patent, the U.S. government is endowing you with the exclusive right to exclude others from making, using, or selling your work. A patent is a form of protection that enables you to enter your product or idea (we will call it a widget) into the marketplace with some assurance third parties will not try to claim it as his or her own. There are three types of patents: utility (which covers function), design (which covers aesthetics), and plant (which covers plants of the botanical variety). In the wake of the medical marijuana boom, plant patents may be an up-and-coming topic.

Determining if your widget has commercial viability and creating a prototype are the most important first steps. Perhaps your widget is similar to many other widgets out there – if this is true, the United States Patent and Trademark Office obtaining meaningful protection may be difficult.

Once an application is filed and the widget is “patent pending,” there may be some back-and-forth (or patent prosecution) between your patent attorney and a patent examiner. Applications can take up to five years from filing to granting. Be careful not to wait too long to file for patent protection, but don’t file too soon, either. Under U.S. law, once you publicly disclose your invention, you have one year to submit your application, or else you may lose the right altogether.

Trademarks

Registration of trademarks is governed by Florida Statutes, Chapter 495. Trademark law means providing the IP owner with exclusive rights to use a symbol or mark that distinguishes the goods or products of one person from another. It could be a word, phrase, design, or logo used to identify a company or product. A service mark is the same as a trademark, except it identifies the source of services. Trademarks are valuable assets, which generate repeat business due to recognition and familiarity.

Registering your trademark has the effect of preventing competitors from using a mark to which they are not entitled. The trademark owner has “goodwill” in the company; consumer goodwill is earned by a business over a period of time and has intrinsic value. Trademark law also protects consumers from deception. Not only can a trademark owner prevent someone from using its exact mark, but using marks that are “confusingly similar” to a trademark can be legally prohibited.

Unlike rights in a patent or a copyright, an owner’s rights in a trademark can last in perpetuity as long as the mark is in use and registration is regularly renewed.

Copyright Law

Intellectual property such as original writings, music, designs, and other works of expression are protected under federal copyright law, which gives the author exclusive rights to use the works. Copyright generally terminates 70 years after the author’s death.

It may be a familiar concept that “copyright is automatic when a work is created,” which is in a sense true, but the key to protecting and enforcing is copyright notice and registration.

Copyright notice, or © used in conjunction with the first year of publication and the name of the author/owner, puts the public on notice that the work is protected. Registration isn’t required; however, if an author/owner wishes to bring an infringement lawsuit, registration is a necessary condition precedent. A copyright can be registered through the U.S. Copyright Office at the Library of Congress.

To all the inventors, entrepreneurs, authors, and artists: the internet has provided a global marketplace to share your talents with those across the world, but don’t underestimate the value of a good idea. Our lawyers can keep it under lock and key and have your intellectual property protected.

Protect Your Business & Call Our Team

If you’ve already received a copyright, trademark, or patent, we can help you enforce your rights against others using your inventions without your permission. Your business’s trade secrets — customer lists, price lists, strategies, plans, research — are also intellectual property and are entitled to protection from ex-employees and competitors.

Our Orlando intellectual property attorneys are also experienced with eDiscovery, a general term for extracting information relevant to a legal proceeding — whether civil or criminal — from electronic documents such as emails, spreadsheets, text files, and images. The use of electronically stored information is subject to very particular rules, codified recently in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure as well state law.

Call us for effective legal representation at (407) 500-0000. Our attorneys have successfully litigated countless cases and work vigorously to stay abreast of the latest developments in case law.