Articles on Intellectual Property
What is Legally Required For Me to Use Popular Characters in My Business?
I want to start a company using popular characters to perform at parties. What are my legal responsibilities so I am not guilty of copyright infringement? I was selling a study kits on eBay for the Veterinary Technician National Board Exam. The kits were photocopies of a series of handouts I received from a class I took in NYC 10 years ago to study for the boards. None of the materials have any copyright notice on them, nor were we informed to “keep this information to ourselves” during the class. Then I get a letter from a lawyer representing the VTNE owners. They go on to tell me that I have to stop selling the study materials and give them all copies along with names and addresses of all buyers of the kit along with what that person paid for it. What is likely to happen if I ignore the request and continue to sell this item on eBay? Best and worst case scenario? I am starting a new internet based business selling daily horse racing tip sheets, similar to the ones you can purchase at a racetrack on race day. I wanted to verify that this is legal before going live with the website. While employed by Americorp, and working for a host agency I photographed work that I completed in the scope of my duty. The photos were used for state permit submission. I gave the organization a credit that they did the work, with me being the one who designed and implemented it while hosted by them. I believe that I am in the right in using these photos on my new business website as I am the one who took them. They are in public record and I was not directly employed by the host organization claiming copyright. I have collected hundreds of images from Google image in the way of restaurants, food items, movies, cartoon characters, movie characters, snacks, drinks, storybook titles, toys, games and many other types of “picture print” that is familiar to emergent readers. I have done extensive research about the use of these images for my own classroom use. I find that they are perfectly legal. I am confused about the next step I am ready for. I own the trademark [xyz]. I recently, due to an email mixup, lost the legal ownership to my website [xyz.com ]. On our school library web site we post the titles and authors of books that have won our school district’s Favorite Picture Book Award. Would it be legal to copy and paste a picture of the book’s cover to accompany such a posting? I was involved in a children’s music production as a music teacher at a private school. Now, years later, all the children are adults, and I’d like to show some clips of the children’s production on my website. Trademark registration is a hot topic right now. But what is a trademark? And what’s involved with trademark registration? Continued from Part 1, available here, we continue our discussion about trademark registration, what is a trademark, and how to register a trademark. eCommerce solutions are usually considered “business methods”, for which patent protection has traditionally been hard to achieve. But with the growing trend towards allowing patent of “business methods”, it’s now worth pursuing. Similar to a design patent in the United States, a design registration is a method for protecting your designs in European and other countries.
