SLPL_Patenttrademark

The fourth type of intellectual property is the least well known (the first three: copyright, trademark, and patent). Trade secrets don't have a government office that registers them, because they're protected by being kept secret. This page from the USPTO has a brief introduction, and don't forget that trade secrets were a topic of this…

Often someone will walk into the Patent & Trademark Resource Center and say "I'd like to get a patent for my logo". It is easy to confuse patents and trademarks, because they are both intellectual property, and even share an office. However, they protect very different things. A US patent protects one of three things: a…

Readers of the Riverfront Times may have noticed a story showing the effect of a battle over intellectual property. A dispute over the trademark for Amighetti's resulted in the closure of Colino's Cafe and Bakery earlier this month. This article tells a piece of the story and shows the importance of the ownership of recipes…

Do you sometimes see a reference to a patent number and want to know more? Answers are a quick search away. Head over to uspto.gov, and enter the PatFT database under the Find It Fast section. From there it's a quick jump to find out that patent 8,005,759 is for "System and method for providing a…

Recently, the PTRC received an inquiry about whether the Catholic Church owns any patents. How do you find out whether a corporation or other institution has any patents? Start at PatFT, the USPTO's database of full-text patents. The default searches all fields, but it is often much more useful to pick a particular field. Patent…

As discussed over a year ago, on December 21 the option to correspond about trademarks with the USPTO via paper mail will no longer be available. Instead, there will be the two electronic filing options (and TEAS RF will now be called TEAS Standard), and they will share an application form. The difference between them is…

The last blog post was about a very particular kind of mark which indicates where something is produced. There are other certification marks that indicate other characteristics. A certification mark may be a geographical indicator, like but it can also indicate other characteristics, like or This page from Underwriter Laboratories explains how they certify use of…

Trademarks are the form of intellectual property that tells customers who makes a product, and gives some assurance that you'll get what you're expecting. But those products could be made anywhere in the world, in any proper production facility. If you care about the particular geographic location that supplies the goods you're buying, you're looking…