Category: Intellectual Property
This particularly “risky” domain is, you guessed it, the adult entertainment sponsored top level domain. This domain has finally been approved by ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). Unlike the .com, .ca, and .info domains, the .XXX domain cannot be registered by just anyone……it is limited to the adult entertainment industry (in a similar way to the ‘.gov’ sites being limited to government entities in the US).
Unfortunately for NBC Universal (“NBC”), along with the release of the final Harry Potter movie came the filing of a $1.5milion lawsuit against NBC. The Plaintiff, P22 Type Foundry (“P22”) is a company that designs typefaces. P22 are claiming that the font used on some Harry Potter merchandise (including a “Dementor Cap”, a “Hogwarts Stationery Set” and a “Hedwig Pillow”) was created by them. The font in question is “Cezanne Regular”.
We would like to take this opportunity to provide you with important information about protecting your intellectual property rights. This information is designed to assist you in evaluating your needs in that area.
WHAT IS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY?
Established and start-up businesses are repeatedly told of the importance of protecting their intellectual property, or “IP” as it is frequently called. Before this can be done however, it is necessary to understand what IP is and how to identify when valuable IP may exist and therefore need protecting. This article begins a series in the Legal Alert intended to first introduce what intellectual property is. Future articles will discuss the various types of IP introduced here and address issues specific to each of these.
You update your computer software when new versions are released. You renew your insurance every year. You follow the manufacturer’s suggested maintenance schedule for your vehicle. And yet, when was the last time you checked to make sure your intellectual property (“IP”) was up to date. More importantly, do you know what your IP is?
In this article of our series on intellectual property, we talk about aspects of obtaining international patent protection. Most of the previous articles have provided information on Canadian and US patent law. Many inventors also want to obtain patent protection in other countries outside of North America.
Licensing or assigning your intellectual property rights (such as trade-marks, copyrights and patents) to other companies can generate lucrative license fees and royalties but it can also be a minefield. To protect yourself, it is imperative to get these licensing and/or assignment arrangements in writing so as to avoid costly litigation in the future.
As of June 13, 2009, the popular social networking site, Facebook, now allows users to reserve their usernames as URLs (the general information for this is posted at: http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=90316352130).