Stolen Intellectual Property

Infringement occurs when a business or individual violates your intellectual property rights. Specifically, those rights related to patents, copyright, and trademarks but may also include the theft or misappropriation of trade secrets. Depending on the jurisdiction and related circumstances, remedies for IP theft may be sought under civil law or criminal law.

Generally, an intellectual property lawyer will recommend trying to resolve infringement claims without litigation. But it is not uncommon for IP theft cases to require civil litigation or even police involvement to resolve. The IP attorneys at War IP Law PLLC can advise you if your intellectual property has been stolen or otherwise misappropriated. Call us today.

Patent Infringement

Patents are subject to territorial jurisdictions and, as such, an infringement claim may only be brought against the infringing party in a country in which the intellectual property is protected. Likewise, the use of a patent without a proper license from the patent holder is also infringement. In some countries, the patent must have a commercial use or application to maintain an infringement claim.

Patents subject to territorial jurisdictions and, as such, an infringement claim may only be brought against the infringing party in the country where the infringement occurred. For example, U.S. patent may protect the patent holder from others in the U.S. making, using, selling, or importing the patented work, but people in other countries may be free to exploit the patented invention in their country.

IP Lawyer’s Opinion

If you want to see if your product may be sold without infringing another party’s patent, your patent attorney may prepare a clearance opinion. To do this, your patent attorney will research your product and look for issue related patents and determine if your product may infringe the claims of one or more issued patents. Your patent attorney may provide his or her opinion on the validity of the patent in question and your patent attorney may provide an opinion on how your product or process may be changed to reduce the possibility that the third party may prevail in a patent infringement lawsuit.

The same is true in reverse. If you have been accused of patent infringement, the same process may be used to determine if you have a defense or if the other side has a case at all.

After you have the opinion, you and your IP attorney will decide on the appropriate course of action.

Copyright Infringement

Copyright infringement occurs when someone uses a copyright-protected work without the permission of the copyright holder. It may include the reproduction, distribution, display or performance of the work without permission of the copyright holder.

Limits of Copyright

Copyright has some limitations. For example, “fair use” permits the use of copyright-protected works in education and in limited quotations in journalism. It may also include commentary, search engines, criticism, parody, news reporting, research, teaching, library archiving and scholarship.

In some cases, the using party may pay a royalty to the copyright holder in exchange for limited use of the copyright protected material.

Qualifying for Copyright Protection

To qualify for copyright protection, a work must generally be an original expression, presented in a fixed medium (such as on paper, audio or visual recording, etc.). An idea itself is not protected, meaning that someone else may copy your idea (without infringing) unless it is your unique expression of the idea.

Trademark Infringement

When someone uses your trademark without your permission on similar goods or services, they may have infringed your trademark. Infringement may also occur when someone uses a trademark which is either identical or confusingly similar to your trademark, on products or services which are similar to yours. For the most part, trademark infringement cases are handled in civil court but may also be criminal in nature if it involves counterfeit goods.

Trademark Dilution

Trademark dilution can occur wen someone uses a trademark that is the same or similar to your famous trademark even if the product or service they offer is slightly different.

Trademark Exceptions

There are exceptions to trademark infringement including the use of a trademark in comparative advertising, and in litigation.

Contact an IP Infringement Attorney

If someone is using your IP without your permission or you have been accused of infringement, call War IP Law PLLC right away. Intellectual property law and litigation is all that we do.