Karen B. Tripp, lawyers in Houston, TX, Texas

Color as Trademark Subject Matter

Under the Lanham Act "any word, name, symbol or device" may be eligible for trademark registration. Courts have differed as to whether or not the law recognizes the use of color alone as a trademark because the Lanham Act does not specifically mention color. For many years the general rule had been that color would not be given trademark significance because of the limited number of colors available, unless the color was employed as an element of a distinctive design.More...

The Basics of Trademarks

What is a trademark?More...

Patent Law

In order to be novel, an invention cannot have been previously patented, described in a printed publication, or used or known by others prior to its invention by the patent applicant. To be known by others, a patent must have been fully disclosed and the disclosure must be accessible to the public in the United States. Only minimal use of an invention by others is necessary to disqualify patent eligibility as long as the use is accessible to the public, which is the case if no steps were taken to conceal the use. Experimental use by the inventor to test the invention is not a use that will disqualify patent eligibility. Printed publication of a description constitutes accessible disclosure of the invention as long as the publication is distributed or is filed in such a way that a member of the public could find it by exercising reasonable diligence. Patents are usually published, which also constitutes printed publication that will negate patent eligibility. If a patent is not published, the relevant inquiry is whether the exact thing to be patented was previously patented and not merely described in an application that ultimately protected some other invention. More...

Procedures before Copyright Royalty Judges

Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panels (CARPs) are ad hoc panels administered by the Librarian of Congress and the Copyright Office. CARPs adjust the rates and distribute the royalty fees collected under the various compulsory licenses and statutory obligations of the Copyright Act. More...

Right of Priority in Patents in International Context

One of the trickiest aspects of patent applications, particularly in the international context, is establishing the priority of patent rights. Rules applying to priority differ starkly between the United States and many foreign countries. The United States has a "first-to-invent" rule, which means that an inventor that can establish that he or she was the first to conceive of and create an invention will be given priority over another inventor of the same invention even if the second inventor applies for a patent first. In contrast, many foreign countries have a "first-to-file" rule, which means that the first inventor to apply for a patent will be given priority even if another inventor actually conceived of and created the same invention first. Further complicating the issue of priority is the fact that, in the United States, an inventor may publicly disclose an unpatented invention and will have a year to file for a patent. In many foreign countries, any public disclosure of an invention renders it ineligible for a patent. Thus, a U.S. inventor might be able to obtain a U.S. patent but be ineligible for patent protection in other countries even though U.S. patent rules were correctly followed.More...