Privacy, Business and Law

A good proprietary information agreement contains a broad definition of proprietary information which is covered by the agreement, including all information about the company’s current and planned products, marketing, forecasts, pricing, customers, and the salaries, duties, qualifications, performance levels, and terms of compensation of other employees.

Trade secrets are commercially useful ideas or information not generally known in the trade. They include technology and business information, and may consist of an intricate product design, a business plan, or knowledge of an important customer’s favorite baseball team.

This article is meant to be a brief overview of design patent basics while informing the reader of the possibility for obtaining a design patent on computer icons. This is yet another tool for protecting your most important asset, your intellectual property.

This article is meant to be a brief overview of performing due diligence when dealing with venture capital, acquisitions, and mergers. This is an important tool for protecting your capital investment.

Copyright registration is the process of filing with the Library of Congress, Copyright Office, an application form. Registration is not necessary in order to have a copyright, however there are certain benefits of obtaining registration, discussed below. A copyright exists in an original work of authorship fixed in a tangible medium

Software patent filing and issuance is growing rapidly as intellectual property has widely become the core asset of many companies. Patenting software inventions has recently gained momentum as the intellectual property protection of choice.

This article is meant to be a brief overview of trademark basics while informing the reader of the possibility for federal domain name registration. This is yet another tool for protecting your most important asset, your intellectual property.

In the late 1960s when IBM’s internal policy was that software should not be patentable, IBM vice president, J. W. Birkenstock, chaired a presidential commission on the patent system which recommended that software should not be patentable. We expect that the other commission members deferred to IBM’s expertise on software, just as members of a [...]

U.S. Patent 4,736,308, the first patent under the heading “Absurd Patents” in “Against Software Patents” is described: “For example, Apple was sued because the HyperCard program allegedly violates patent number 4,736,308 a patent that covers displaying portions of two or more strings together on the screen, effectively scrolling with multiple subwindows. Scrolling and subwindows are [...]

This year inventors will be hit with a double whammy: First The Government passed the GATT Law which eliminates the 17-year minimum patent term and now the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) in increasing its fees, effective 1995 October 1. While we can’t do much about the higher fees without a drastic change in the [...]