Gary Marshall's Technology Law Blog

Intellectual property (IP) law is a deceptively complex area of law. IP law is very rules based, and the rules vary depending on the type of IP protection. Non-IP attorneys and individuals who attempt to practice IP law without the assistance of an IP attorney often run into trouble. Here are ten common traps.

Copyright

1. Copyright law is one of the few areas of law where transfers of rights must usually be in writing (real estate is the other obvious example.)

2. The owner of the copyright is the person who created the work, not the person who paid for it. You hire someone to design a website for you. It is your website. You paid for it. But absent a written agreement to the contrary, the website developer owns the copyright in the website.

3. It is deceptively easy to end up accidentally jointly owning the copyright instead of owning it outright. Say you write a software game program, but you hire an outside firm to handle the sounds. It is quite possible for the outside firm to own part of the copyright in the entire software game program. (This is called joint authorship.) This is easy to fix with a written agreement that covers copyright ownership.

Trademark

4. The right to register a federal trademark belongs to the person who used the mark first in interstate commerce, not the person who filed a registration first. But if the first person to use does not object to the other person’s improper federal registration within five years of registration, they may permanently lose the right to object.

5. You do not lose copyright rights by not policing your rights, but you can lose trademark rights by not aggressively policing your rights.

6. One way you can fail to police your rights and lose your trademark is if you license someone to sell your widgets under your trademark and the license agreement does not allow you the right to police the other party’s use of your mark.

Copyright and Trademark Registration

7. Copyright rights and trademark rights are both created automatically. Copyright rights exist as soon as you create something. Trademark rights exist as soon as you use a trademark in commerce. But in each case, you gain considerable additional protection by registering your rights. People often neglect to register.

Copyright registration is only at the federal level. It is fairly straightforward and can usually be done by a non-lawyer. (Practice Tip: Have you registered the copyright in your website and other marketing materials?) Trademarks can be registered at both the state and federal level. State trademark registration is also fairly straightforward but does not help much. Federal trademark registration is deceptively complex. Sometimes a federal trademark registration will be approved as submitted, but quite often it will not. You may need to negotiate with the Trademark Office, and there is a specialized technical language that they use and expect you to use as well. When trying to register a trademark federally, it is best to use an attorney who is familiar with the federal trademark registration process.

Trade Secret

8. A customer list is considered a trade secret. An employee cannot take a physical copy of the list with them when they leave a company. If the employee memorizes the list, that is considered the same as taking a physical copy.

Non-Compete Agreements

9. In Washington, where I practice law, a non-compete agreement entered into after the employee has started working for a company is not enforceable unless the employee is given new consideration for signing the agreement. The right to continue working for the company and to not get fired is not considered new consideration. Labriola v. Pollard Group, Inc., 152 Wn.2d 828, 834,100 P.3d 791 (2004).

Family Law and Estate Planning

10. Intellectual property is property. Yet I often see a divorce property settlement agreement or a will where there is no mention of intellectual property. Have you written a book, or painted a picture, or created other intellectual property? If so, it should be accounted for in the legal documents.

(These examples are oversimplified. Although they apply most of the time, I omitted all of the caveats for when they do not apply. Do not rely on these rules without seeking specialized IP law advice first. )