Trademark, copyright and brand-protection insights
The newest of 926 published documents. The full collection, by type and practice area, is in the knowledge base.
- The 3-Month Office Action Deadline: What It Means for Applicants · Article — For most trademark applications, the deadline to respond to a USPTO office action is three months from the issue date, not the six months that governed federal…
- 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…
- Consumer Survey and Expert Evidence Toolkit: Surveys, Experts, and Daubert · Toolkit — Consumer surveys and the experts who build, defend, and attack them are where a great many trademark cases are quietly decided, and this toolkit is the guided…
- 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…
- Conducting a Trademark Portfolio Audit: A Brand Owner’s Checklist · Checklist — A trademark portfolio is a living asset that decays quietly unless someone inventories it, stress-tests it, and prunes it on a schedule. This Marksy checklist…
- Overcoming Patent Rejections: A Practitioner’s Guide to Office Action Responses · Article — An office action is the patent examiner’s written verdict-in-progress: the list of rejections and objections standing between an application and an issued…
- Brand Launch IP Clearance Checklist: Vetting a New Name Before You Spend · Checklist — Launching a brand is the single most expensive moment to discover an intellectual-property problem, because by then you have already paid for the name on…
- Establishing Secondary Meaning: A Section 2(f) Evidence Checklist · Checklist — A descriptive term, an ordinary surname, a place name, a single color, or a product shape cannot be owned as a trademark until buyers stop hearing it as a…
- Trademark Damages and Profits: An Evidence and Proof Checklist · Checklist — Winning on liability is only half the battle; collecting a real judgment depends on the evidence you marshal for damages and profits. This checklist walks…
- Cancelling a Registration at the TTAB: A Petitioner’s Checklist · Checklist — A federal registration is formidable but never untouchable: under Section 14 of the Lanham Act it can be cancelled when it should never have issued or no…
- Cease-and-Desist Letters: A Two-Sided Playbook for Senders and Recipients · Article — A trademark cease-and-desist letter is usually the first real move in a brand dispute, and how it is written—or answered—often decides the whole game before a…
- Common-Law Rights and Geographic Scope Toolkit: Unregistered Marks and Priority · Toolkit — This toolkit is a guided research path through everything Marksy has published on unregistered trademark rights, priority, and the geography of brand…
- Answering a Trademark Office Action: A Response Checklist · Checklist — A working checklist for answering a USPTO trademark office action, updated for the three-month response clock (extendable once for a fee) that replaced the old…
- Can You Trademark Your Own Name? Surnames, Fame, and the Right of Publicity · Article — Your own name can absolutely become a federal trademark, yet the Lanham Act makes it one of the harder marks to register, and this guide explains exactly why…
- Cancelling a Registration in Court: Section 37 and Federal Litigation · Article — A federal trademark registration looks final, but it is a correctable entry in a public ledger, and a court can strike it. This guide explains how…
- Common-Law Trademark Rights: Owning a Mark Without Registering · Article — In the United States, trademark rights are born from use, not paperwork, which means a business can own and enforce a brand without ever filing a form. This…
- Can You Copyright a Font? Style, Typefaces, and the Fine Line · Article — Can you copyright a font? The honest answer arrives in three parts, because copyright law sees three different objects where most people see one. An artistic…
- 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…
- Appealing a Trademark Case in the Second Circuit: Standards of Review · Article — When a trademark case reaches the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the standard of review usually matters more than the merits, because…
- 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…
- Disparaging Marks and the First Amendment: The Redskins, The Slants, and Matal v. Tam · Article — Can the federal government refuse to register a brand because someone finds it offensive? For seventy years the Lanham Act said yes, and the most contested…