The Lanham Act section 43a

The Lanham Act contains the federal statutes governing trademark law in the United States. The Lanham Act is the federal trademark law that provides a national system of trademark registration and protects the owner of a valid trademark against the use of similar marks if any confusion might result. The Lanham Act is not the exclusive law governing U.S. trademark law because both common law and state statutes also control some aspects of trademark protection. The common law cause of action on which section 43(a) is based is called passing off or palming off of goods and occurs when a producer misrepresents his or her own goods or services as those of another producer. More...

Patents

A patent is a right granted by the federal government to exclude others from making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing the subject of the patent for a limited period of time, whether it be an invention, process, composition of material, or other patentable article, without the permission of the patent owner. Conduct that interferes with the right of exclusion is called infringement. More...

Choosing a Protectable Trademark

The spectrum of trademark distinctiveness goes from fanciful marks, which are very protectable, to generic trademarks, which are not protectable. In trademark usage, words can be classified according to the degree of their distinctiveness. The right to protection of a trademark comes from its use to identify the product. When choosing a protectable trademark it should be highly distinctive. Choose trademarks that are fanciful, arbitrary, or suggestive because they are considered distinctive enough to function as trademarks.More...

Generic Names as Trademark Subject Matter

A generic name is the common descriptive name of the product a trademark identifies. Generic names may not be protected under trademark laws. The intended trademark cannot be registered and the owner has no right to stop others from using a similar mark. Unlike descriptive marks, generic devices will not become a trademark even if they are advertised so heavily that secondary meaning can be proven in the mind of consumers. The rationale for creating the category of generic marks is that no manufacturer or service provider should be given exclusive right to use words that generically identify a product. Therefore, if a company attempts to use the name of the goods themselves, such as "Lemonade" for a lemonade drink or "Bicycle" for a bicycle, that name will not be protected because it is generic. More...

The Architectural Works Copyright Protection Act of 1990

In December 1990, President Bush signed into law the Architectural Works Copyright Protection Act of 1990. The 1990 Act provides the design professional with significant protections and rights unavailable under prior law. Prior to this legislation, copyright protection for the work of design professionals was afforded only to drawings and specifications. The author of the design had no copyright remedy if a duplicate structure was constructed from the original drawings and specifications or from the building itself, as long as the drawings and specifications were not copied. The 1990 Act retains copyright protection for drawings as "pictorial" or "graphic" works, and building from the original drawings or building is now considered a copyright infringement. More...