If you own a business, you need a lot of professionals to help you along. In some cases, that includes accountants or marketing experts. In other cases, it involves people who understand business process outsourcing. However, almost all business owners need a great business attorney on their side. Just started your business? Interested in growing it and have legal questions? Wondering what a business attorney does? In this blog, I plan to answer all those questions. I hope that you enjoy reading these posts and that they help you. Thank you for reading! My name is Brenda, and I started a small business when I was just 17. Over the years, I have worked with many pros, but my business attorney has helped me the most.
If you come up with a unique idea, product or service, it is a prudent thing to safeguard your invention. This will prevent other people from making counterfeit goods, or make a living off your efforts without giving you the credit that you deserve. With a trademark, you can register symbols and words to identify your venture or product. It will give you a legally recognised and unique identity that others cannot use without your permission. You can either protect the whole idea or just a part of it (partial protection). Here are few things you should know about partial protection when using trademarks:
How it Works
As much as most trademarks often apply to inventions that have never been seen or applied before, partial protection allows you to safeguard an idea that you have developed as a modification of something that already exists. Take the case of a medicinal drug used to treat a certain recurrent disease. Besides its popular use, you discover that the drug can keep a patient from contracting that disease ever again whenever it is combined with other chemicals in its dosage. Therefore, you can patent this invention as an enhancement of the drug that already exists in the market. This means that any other person manufacturing the drug with your chemical enhancement must have your permission.
Identifying Partial Protection Infringement
Just like many other trademarked innovations, partially protected goods and ideas are subject to infringement. You should be on the lookout for those who want to take advantage of the fact that your product is not wholly protected. Often, infringement will result from those with deceptive and misleading intentions. For example, they might deceive people into believing that another counterfeit product they are buying contains your unique enhancement or modification. Therefore, you should look for those names, words, or symbols that resemble or create the illusion that the counterfeit products has your trademarked modifications.
Licensees
Licensees are parties to whom you grant the exclusive authority to use or reproduce your trademarked invention as it is. They will pay you for allowing them to use your innovation.
When granting such permission to a licensee, you should tell them that their rights are only limited to the modification you have trademarked. Therefore, any other modification made on the existing products, besides what your trademark stands for, falls outside the terms of the license. Therefore, the licensee will be liable to any other parties that will have a legal claim.
Share5 April 2016
