Intellectual Property Rights include Trademarks or Trade Names, Patents, Copyrights, Trade Secrets and other proprietary information.   Securing the rights to utilize and protect your intellectual property are becoming more and more important in the digital world.  Employment agreements must be carefully drafted to include protections for intellectual property and any inventions, proprietary processes or designs must be patented to prevent unauthorized use 0r theft of the ideas.  I do not handle patents, but can refer very talented counsel to assist in patent matters.

One of the primary intellectual property assets a business has is the trade name and trademarks  for service or products under which the recognition and goodwill of the business is built.  However, most business owners are unaware that these valuable assets are not be fully protected by incorporation with the Secretary of State or state trademark registration.  In fact, federal trademark registration (Lanham Act 15 U.S.C. 1072) is constructive notice of one’s rights to the use of a name and failure to check the federal register prior to adoption risks infringing a federal trademark registration.  Under Federal Trademark law, a federal trademark registration usually will take precedent over the state laws if an infringement arises as a result of two business using the same or similar trade name or trademark.

A business builds its reputation under it’s intellectual property, and especially it’s trade name and/or trademarks.  This intellectual property is a business asset that add value to the business and can be sold or assigned to others along with the business.  If a business loses the right to use that trade name or trademark or other intellectual property, then it must re-establish its reputation under a new trade name or trademark and suffer the loss of competition from those who have taken other intellectual property.  For these reasons, businesses should be very careful to protect all intellectual property and  especially it’s trade name or trademarks.