when to use them, how to get them

Most of the time I'm involved with patents but lately I've seen more and more clients where a trademark is a more appropriate  method of protecting a clients intellectual property.

One situation is when a product has already been in the market place.  Patent law says you can't patent an invention once it has been publicly disclosed or offered for sale.

Trademarks tend to be the opposite.  When a product has been in the marketplace for some time the trademark is better established than if it had not been.

Another situation occurs when an invention can't be patented because it is obvious based  on previous prior art.  While, for example, you can't patent something for which a patent was granted and expired,  you can trademark it.

There are two kinds of trademarks,  unregistered and registered.  The first is the easiest and least costly to use.  Its also the most difficult to enforce.  To establish a right to an unregistered trademark you simply need to put the symbol  ^TM  after the word or phrase you wish to protect.

The second type of trademark , the registered trademark designated by a   ®  is   and more expensive to get but also more valuable. 

In order to register a trademark you must establish that no one else making a similar product has already used that trademark.

And that issue is much  more difficult than one might expect.  In trying to get a trademark for a client we found that all variety's of the words "Snap-On"  had been trademarked by the Snap On tools corporation.  And just about any image that had two socks in it was owned by the Boston Red Socks.

You can trademark not only words and phrases but also images. We got into some very interesting problems in trying to trademark some images for a logo.

We are all aware of the large number of images available as clip art. Most are copyrighted and some require permission to use,  but our big surprise was in finding that even clip art that is shown as free to use, is not free to use in a trademark.  You need to carefully read the terms and conditions of using "free"  clip art if you want it for a logo or trademark.

We ended up hiring a graphic artist to draft us a logo.  But even that wasn't enough.  The artist had to sign the rights to use the logo over to my client as it was automatically   copyrighted for her unless she released it.

So use TM first and then consult an attorney if you want an  ®.  To help sort things out as to what you should do and when, just contact us, we can help.

 

(Submitted Ideas Offices and other names)

Large corporations get lots of unsolicited offers from inventors.  And so in their bureaucratic way they set up mechanisms to deal with them.

Unfortunately the "offices"  set up to collect and evaluate these submissions seldom do so.  In fact in many cases they are arranged specifically to avoid having any of the companies management actually see  any submitted idea

A good example of why this might happen is comes from a Seinfeld episode where Cosmo Kramer tells Calvin Klein about his idea of "A perfume that smells like the beach". The Calvin Klein executive laughs Kramer out of his office and a year later Calvin Klein is making a perfume called "The Ocean" based on Kramer's idea.  An incensed Kramer descends upon Calvin's threatening to sue.

In the real world  a corporate executive would never have seen Kramer's idea in the first place.  Instead it would have been sent to the "Submitted Ideas Office".  The staff of this office are  be instructed  to never talk to anyone else in the company about submitted ideas.  These "dirty"  officials are the company's perimeter defense against being sued for ideas which the company develops that later are found to be similar to outsiders inventions. Some companies have outsourced this function to "Idea submissions" corporations.  This keeps them even further away from the inventor who thinks he/she is actually being helped.

I once was in a department  at a large company which  wanted new ideas and I went to the Submitted Ideas Office and was rebuffed as if I was an alien.  Didn't I know it was their job to protect the company from outside ideas?

But their protection didn't extend to one nut with contacts who wangled a personal appointment with myself and  my boss to describe his invention of a color film based on numerology (his submission was covered with images of hands cut out of construction paper).  We had a hard time getting rid of this nut.  Of course because he knew a company Vice President he never went through the Submitted Ideas Office filter.

ITTr's job is to avoid these filters and take your idea directly to the decision makers. Its not easy to connect to these folks, but its often the only way to get attention from a big corporation.  That's what ITTr is paid to do.

For more information write to rblazey@ittrifecta.com or call (585) 520-3539

I'm a big fan of Jeffrey Gitomer and recently I purchased his online library and have been listening to some of his tapes.  Recently he answered a query from a  listener regarding trade show visits.

Jeffrey made several suggestions for making a booth more attractive, such as making it fun and giving away prizes.   But what interested me was his comments on what to do with leads collected at the show as that is the mission of Penguin's Trade Show Followup (TSF) product.

Jeffrey recommends responding to the leads as soon as possible.  By entering them immediately into databases and making calls to hot prospects to arrange appointments right from the tradeshow floor.

And that makes sense for those leads that are most likely to generate new business quickly.   But what about the rest of them.   Those hundred business cards in the fishbowl at your booth, or those cards in your pocket with notes on the back of them.  

They may not generate immediate business and are likely to be forgotten a week or so after you return from the show.   Still they have potential value, and if you even turn 10% of them into real customers, thats 10% more customers than you would have had otherwise.

TSF is setup to contact everyone of those potential customers with your sales message and also to collect their comments.

While TSF uses scripts that are created by you in concert with the Penguin staff,  the scripts are designed to be open ended based on our Market Sonar "voice of the customer"  calling method.  Thus you will learn more than a Yes/Now or multiple choice questionnaire would tell you.

The TSF operator has a window that she can type the customers comments into as she goes through the script.  Thus a transcript of the call is generated which can be analyzed later or reviewed by the client if so desired.

TSF is intended to be used either by attendees at a trade show or by vendors.  In either case there will be an assortment of business cards (in paper or electronic format)  which the operators enter into a database from which calls are made.

To learn more about how TSF can help you get the most out of your Tradeshow visit, contact us using the information below.

We appreciate your responses to our newsletters.  Please send us your comments.  We are always interested in what you want to know.  See the New Letters to the Editor link in the block below