Trademark, copyright and brand-protection insights
The newest of 925 published documents. The full collection, by type and practice area, is in the knowledge base.
- Education Copyright Checklist: Faculty Ownership, Classroom Use, Course Packs, Platform Terms, and Student Work · Checklist — This checklist audits and then builds copyright compliance at an educational institution across the four systems that actually matter. Phase one interrogates…
- Freedom to Operate: What a Patent Clearance Search Can and Cannot Tell You · Article — A patentability search asks whether you can get a patent. A freedom-to-operate search asks whether you can sell your product without being sued. They are…
- Medical Device and Diagnostics IP Toolkit: Claims, Regulatory Timing, and Aftermarket Control · Toolkit — Medical device and diagnostic intellectual property runs on two clocks that rarely align, and most portfolio failures in the sector come from treating them as…
- The Name a Mission Depends On: Trademarks, Chapters, and Donor Data in Nonprofit Organisations · Article — A nonprofit's name is frequently its only asset that appreciates, and it is the asset most often held without a filing, licensed without a document, and…
- Litigating Claim Construction: A Practitioner's Guide to Markman Briefing, Experts, and Indefiniteness · Guide — Claim construction is where most patent cases are decided, and it runs on a procedural schedule that begins months before the hearing. This guide works it in…
- Patent Prosecution Toolkit: From Provisional to Issued Claim · Toolkit — Prosecution is where a patent's scope is actually decided, and nearly all of it happens in writing that will be read by adversaries for twenty years. This…
- Aftermarket, Repair, and Spare Parts IP Toolkit: Design Rights, Repair Doctrine, and Software Locks · Toolkit — The aftermarket is where intellectual property doctrine collides with the ordinary expectation that a thing you bought can be fixed, and the collision produces…
- Arbitrating an IP Dispute: A Practitioner's Guide to Clause Drafting, Forum Selection, Confidentiality, and Enforcement · Guide — This guide drafts and runs an intellectual property arbitration, treating the clause as the strategic instrument it is rather than as boilerplate. It works the…
- PTAB Petition Checklist: Grounds, Prior Art, Expert Declarations, and the Institution Decision · Checklist — A petition to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board is the entire case, filed once, under a hard statutory bar, with no discovery to fill gaps and no appeal from a…
- Claim Construction Toolkit: Terms, the Record, and Markman Strategy · Toolkit — Claim construction decides more patent cases than any other event, and it is decided almost entirely on documents written years earlier by people who were not…
- The First Sale Doctrine and Gray Market Goods · Article — The first-sale doctrine—trademark law's exhaustion rule—lets anyone resell a genuine branded good without the markholder's permission, because a truthful mark…
- Concurrent Use Proceedings at the TTAB: Dividing the Country · Article — Federal trademark registration usually behaves like an all-or-nothing prize: one owner takes the whole country, and everyone holding a confusingly similar mark…
- Proving or Defeating Trademark Abandonment: An Evidence Checklist · Checklist — Abandonment is the rare trademark theory that can destroy a valuable mark outright, and it is won or lost on evidence rather than rhetoric. This Rightsy…
- Superheroes and Their Lawyers: The Great IP Battles of the Comic Book World · Article — Superheroes are some of the most valuable property on the planet, and the fights over who owns them are among the most dramatic episodes in copyright and…
- Running the Likelihood-of-Confusion Analysis: A Factor-by-Factor Checklist · Checklist — Likelihood of confusion is the controlling question in nearly every trademark dispute, and answering it well is a disciplined, factor-by-factor exercise rather…
- Stopping the Infringer: Trademark Injunctions After eBay · Article — In trademark litigation the order to stop is usually the real prize, but since eBay Inc. v. MercExchange a finding of infringement no longer guarantees one —…
- When You Win: Remedies and Damages for Trademark Infringement · Article — A finding of infringement settles who was right; it does not settle what the win is worth. This guide maps the full remedial menu of the Lanham Act, organized…
- Stone Creek v. Omnia: When Knowledge Destroys Good Faith · Article — In Stone Creek, Inc. v. Omnia Italian Design, Inc., 875 F.3d 426 (9th Cir. 2017), the Ninth Circuit answered a question the Supreme Court had left open since…
- Protecting Product Configuration: Where Innovation Meets Competition · Article — Product configuration -- the shape and overall look of the product itself -- can be protected as trade dress, but only inside boundaries the Supreme Court has…
- Reclaiming a Hijacked Domain: The UDRP Complaint, Step by Step · Article — A step-by-step, practitioner-grade guide to clawing a domain name back from a cybersquatter through ICANN's Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy. It…
- When Should You Trademark Your Brand? Timing the Filing Decision · Article — Deciding when to trademark a brand is, at bottom, a timing decision, and the founders who treat it as an afterthought routinely pay for the delay in lost…
- Sending a DMCA Takedown Notice: A Compliance Checklist · Checklist — A phase-by-phase compliance checklist for sending a DMCA takedown notice that a hosting provider cannot ignore, grounded in 17 U.S.C. Section 512. It runs the…
- Registering a Copyright: A Step-by-Step Tour of the Copyright Office · Article — A copyright springs into existence the instant an original work is fixed in a tangible medium, yet the unregistered copyright is a right you cannot fully…
- Filing a UDRP Domain-Name Complaint: A Step-by-Step Checklist · Checklist — A practitioner-grade, phase-by-phase checklist for clawing a hijacked domain name back from a cybersquatter through ICANN's Uniform Domain-Name…
- Patent Basics: Utility, Design, and Plant Patents in Plain English · Article — A patent is a time-limited right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention, granted in return for teaching the public how that invention…
- Common-Law Rights and Geographic Scope Toolkit: Unregistered Marks and Priority · Toolkit — This toolkit is a guided research path through everything Rightsy has published on unregistered trademark rights, priority, and the geography of brand…
- Setting Up a Trademark Watch and Policing Program: A Checklist · Checklist — A trademark is only as strong as the owner's willingness to watch the market and act on what it finds. This checklist builds a complete watch-and-policing…
- Goods, Services, and the Nice Classes: A Classification Checklist · Checklist — A trademark protects only the goods and services you actually claim, and the USPTO files every offering into the 45 standardized drawers of the Nice…
- Picking a Mark That Can Be Protected: A Selection Checklist · Checklist — Protectability is not decided at the trademark office; it is decided at the naming whiteboard, the moment a founder picks a word. This checklist walks business…
- Stopping Counterfeits at the Border: Recording Your Mark with CBP · Article — Recording a federally registered trademark with U.S. Customs and Border Protection turns the government into a standing partner that intercepts counterfeit and…