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Monthly Archives: October 2011
The cast members of MTV’s show Jersey Shore are certainly not shy about self-promotion, and Mike Sorrentino – better known as “The Situation” – is making full use of intellectual property law to defend his publicity rights. Sorrentino’s trademark is “GTL,” which stands for gym, tan and laundry, evidently referring to the three things that Sorrentino makes sure he does every day. Other companies have been trying to take advantage of GTL, prompting Sorrentino to take action. Sorrentino sent a cease and desist letter to the website MyGTLFuel.com, which sells products to “fuel” your lifestyle. The fuel includes energy shots, t-shirts, tanning products and bodywash. The site’s owner does not think that Sorrentino actually owns the trademark. Sorrentino has applied for the GTL trademark, but does not yet possess it. In the meantime, the website owner has no plans to stop selling GTL fuel, prompting Sorrentino to file a federal…
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Inventors both amateur and professional often wonder when they should seek patent protection for something that they came up with. Patent ideas do have to be realistic – in other words, someone in the business should be able to make the product or use the process by following your patent ideas. So, the time to patent occurs somewhere between after you come up with your idea and before you have a finished product ready to go on sale. A provisional patent may be suitable for your needs. Congress introduced the concept of provisional patents in the mid-1990s, hoping to provide inventors a brief window during which they can benefit from the protections of patent law while they decide how viable their idea is. Filing a provisional application takes less work than a formal patent application. You need only include a specification (that is, a description or drawing to explain the…
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It may sound like a subplot from the 2010 hit movie Inception, but how do you prove the theft of an idea? Is it possible to get legal protection for ideas? The answer to the second question, according to Robert Klein of the Law Offices of Robert M. Klein, is that ideas themselves are not eligible for intellectual property protection. They need to qualify as a trade secret or they need to be the subject of a patent. The problem, at least in the entertainment industry, is that a lot of ideas are out there. It is difficult to come up with something that has not in some form been seen somewhere else. This was the crux of the recent legal battle between DreamWorks Animation and a writer-producer over the movie “Kung Fu Panda.” The plaintiff, Terrence Dunn, claimed that DreamWorks stole his idea and that there was an implied…
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