Introduction to Estate Planning

Estate planning is the creation of a comprehensive financial plan to provide for your spouse and heirs upon your passing.

How To Create A Creditor Debt Management Program

Creditor protection is a concern for most professionals, small business owners and others potentially susceptible to personal liability during their lifetime or after death.

Intellectual Property: Design - Spare Parts

In Dyson Ltd v Qualtex [2004], Dyson brought proceedings against the defendant, Qualtex, a manufacturer of vacuum cleaner spare parts, alleging infringement of its unregistered design rights in various spare parts comprising different products. Unregistered design rights are unregistrable intellectual property rights that arise automatically by the operation of law and protect the owners of original designs from, amongst other things, unauthorised copying. The existence of such rights is subject to certain exceptions.

Patents, Trademarks, Copyrights - What's the Difference?

A discussion of the differences between patents, trademarks and copyrights. What they protect. How long they last.

Intellectual Property

Over the course of humanity, every discovery has yielded more questions as we continue to explore new territory. As we continue to explore the frontier known as cyberspace, and discover new ways to use the medium, we are opened up to more ethical dilemmas and questions. Intellectual property has always been a thorny issue.

Patent Map Generation and Reading

Patent Mapping a way to visualize patent mining results that involves clustering or otherwise orienting patent data on a page so that there is meaning in the spatial relationships among the data points. Patent Landscape: graphical representation of how large numbers of patents relate to each other based on keywords, citations, or patent classifications. It is useful in identify trends, determine patent gaps and opportunities, and design around competitors' patents.

IPC Classsification

One of the hot topics in the IP world today is IPC reform. Due to be published on 1 July 2005, and to come into effect on 1 January 2006, the eighth version of the IPC classification system (also referred to as IPC 2006) may not seem radically different from the previous IPC7, on first blush. But there are important benefits for patent searchers, attorneys, examiners and IP manager

Is Your Domain Name Safe From Theft?

Hundreds of thousands of trademark protected domain names get stolen every year. Is your domain name safe from cyberquatters, pornosquatters and other cyber-leaches?

International Intellectual Patent Protection and Eastern and Western Culture Issues

As an Online Think Tank member, I know that there are two or more sides to every issues and different perspectives and belief systems on all sides of any debate about right and wrong. Yet, I see international intellectual patent protection as a crisis that should have already been solved. The United States must seize this opportunity to fix the problems with our trading partners on the other side of the planet.

Find Email Address Quickly and Easily Like I Did

Last year I remembered a friend I met on holiday, you know how it is you get chatting and always say we must stay in touch so you swap numbers or email addresses and that’s that.

Data Protection - Database Right For Sales Agencies

A ruling by the High Court has resulted in new case law governing sales agencies with regard to database rights. Where a sales agency has built up a database of customer details, they will now own a database right in that database in the event that there is not an agreement with another party as to the ownership of that database.

Intellectual Property - Copyright Infringement - Trade Mark Infringement

The case of KK Sony Computer Entertainment and Another v Pacific Game Technology (Holding) Ltd [2006], concerned the infringement of copyright in computer games systems under the name of 'PlayStation'. The first claimant was a Japanese company and the second claimant was its UK subsidiary. Both claimants were corporate incarnations of the well known Japanese electronics group, Sony.

PPC Ads Face A New Trademark Limitation

A federal court ruled last week that it is not only a trademark violation any longer to use another company’s trademark to deceive search engine users in the paid ad headline. The court has further ruled, that you can not purchase a trademark as a keyword to bring up your paid listing on Google, Yahoo, MSN and other search engines.

When Does Copyright Expire On My Music?

The expiration date on your copyrighted music isn't something you have to worry about, at least not in your lifetime. The music that you've written is copyrighted the moment you've put it onto paper or recorded it. The reason you don't have to worry about expiration is because the music is protected until 70 years after the death of the author. In the case of your music, that author would be you.