International Intellectual Property Legal Blog

Filing a patent in America is easier and less expensive than it is in most other countries. However, it is neither easy nor cheap. The United States Patent and Trademark Office has several guidelines in place that inventors must follow or their claims will be rejected time and time again. One of the major criteria patents must satisfy is novelty. An idea must be new to be accepted. Commercial use of the idea, public disclosures and even articles may undermine the ability to patent an idea.

Another key contributor to success is the temperament of an inventor’s allies. Filing a patent is not a submit-it-and-forget-it system. It may require frequent follow-ups and tweaks, which tacks on time and money. This makes it especially important to work with professionals that are patient and can handle high-stress situations as well as high levels of uncertainty.

The most successful companies all across the globe have one main thing in common; they have secrets. In business, people refer to this as proprietary information. While there are other secrets companies may hang on to that could prove detrimental if released, perhaps none holds greater value than the company’s trade secrets. This may range from recipes to software algorithms and product designs.

In the information age, it is now increasingly difficult for companies and even governments to preserve their privacy. One 2015, CNN article shared a wide range of instances where hackers broke into top-secret systems, not to look for credit card information or to steal money, but to extract and then publish sensitive information.

When it comes to international copyright laws, most of the focus tends to be on music and movies. Every so often a software company may also make the news. But, what about photographers? According to ABC, photographers are losing income to news agencies, travel agencies and other businesses who use their images with neither credit nor payment.

As with other types of media, the internet is the vehicle through which the thievery takes place. Many photographers who share their works online through social media or their website often find those images downloaded and reuploaded elsewhere. Photographers who continually pursue legal action have since been called “copyright trolls.” Many businesses complain that even when the infringement was accidental, rather than receive an initial request to remove the photograph, negotiations began with legal threats and a demand for licensing fees.

In many cases, it is easy to copy online content, such as digital photographs and text. As such, you may wonder if it is possible to copyright your online content and prevent others from using it without your permission. In most cases, you may protect your digital content from unauthorized use. If someone copies and re-publishes your original content without your permissions, these actions often constitute a copyright violation. In most cases, your content falls under standard copyright protection, no matter where in the world you created and published it.

According to FindLaw, copyright law tends to treat digital content in the same manner as traditional offline content. That means the law usually considers it a copyright violation if someone copies or publishes your work without getting your permission. In the United States, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act specifically states that copyright protection extends to online digital content. While you may want to place a copyright notice on your website or watermark your digital images, you do not have to do so to protect your content from unauthorized use. As soon as you create an original work and publish it online, copyright protection may begin. If you create a digital version of your original non-digital content, both forms have copyright protection.