We practice in both Arizona and California, and offer full copyright litigation legal services. Contact us at 602-954-2200.
Copyright services are often necessary as businesses produce unique materials as part of their daily business. Copyright legal services are also useful when a business is forming. As experienced copyright lawyers Peter N. Greenfeld P.C. can help in the planning stages of your business by identifying preliminary copyright needs, including the protection of branded imagery and other property.
|
Understanding Copyrights
There are many misconceptions about what is protected by copyright which might be one reason why many businesses fail to secure such rights or infringe without being fully aware that they are doing so. Copyright law allows the creator of certain original work the exclusive right to control who can make copies, or make works derived from that original work. That is a general description and one should seek legal counsel to advise on the subtleties of what constitutes such work. For one thing, the law also requires that the work exist in some tangible form. Ideas in your head aren't something you can copyright and if you tell someone, you can risk losing any ownership of that idea. Some other misconceptions surrounding copyrights include:
- It's ok to copy a picture
- Assuming that copying is automatically covered under the "fair use" doctrine.
- Copyright violation is not a crime.
|
What Are Your Intellectual Property Rights? Discover and Protect Them
Many small businesses and individuals have intellectual property rights: (trade secrets, copyrights, trademarks) that we help identify. These can be valuable company assets. If a business does not know they have these rights, in a brochure, a recipe or a way of doing business, not only might they be missing out on valuable revenue, but they could lose certain rights by not protecting them if others are copying this information. We assist clients in not only identifying these rights, but filing for copyright and trademark registrations. As a litigation firm, we can also assist with prosecution and defense of trademark, copyright, and trade secrets misappropriation and infringement claims. If a company is not fully aware of the scope of copyright protection, it is also possible that they are infringing on the rights of others without realizing the tremendous risks they might be taking.
Examples of Intellectual Property
Your intellectual property assets may include printed or online advertising material, information posted on your web-sites or online blog or form, business contracts, certain business processes or methods of doing business, logos and your company name. It is unfortunate that many small businesses concentrate on marketing or bringing in income, but not on intellectual property protection. All they have built can collapse like a pack of cards with a single cease and desist that requires a small business to give up the name and goodwill they have built up over the years. Sometimes such requirements require payment in the hundreds or thousands for each use of an infringing name that cost the registered owner business. Of course, some instances are not that clear. A registered owner may or may not have true ownership and the cost of proving original ownership could be prohibitively expensive without the assistance of an attorney to help a business navigate through the maze of establishing ownership or correcting registration problems.
Sometimes business lack the foresight at the start of their business by merely checking to see if a domain name is available and building on an available name to establish a brand that can be copied or used by a competitor or is still confusingly similar to an established brand. We also see horror stories of businesses who train employees in all aspects of their business without protection only to have such employees duplicate the business elsewhere. If that business is in your backyard, the consequences can be particularly devastating.
|
We Offer Full Copyright Law Legal Services
Copyright law is complex and can lead to confusion. Laws which strictly prohibit the use of imagery, for example, may nonetheless allow for the creation of works about the same imagery. Disputes often arise as to the right to works relating to copyrighted works. We can answer your questions and provide efficient and effective legal solutions.
The Law Office of Peter N. Greenfeld P. C. offers experienced copyright, internet related matters and domain name legal services to assist retailers, small to medium business owners restaurants, pubs, jewelers, Fortune 500 firms, franchisees or franchisors in disputes that arise under many different circumstances including:
- Other business copying your written materials whether they are on your website or advertising brochures
- Confusion over who owns a domain name
- Misleading domain names that mislead and redirect consumers away from competitors' sites
- "Cyber piracy," where a party purchases a site and attempts to sell it to an organizations or uses it to misleadingly and illegally drive traffic to their site
- The acquisition of your site by a competitor or cyber pirate when your URL expires, and the attempted sale or misuse of the site
The Law Office of Peter N. Greenfeld P. C.
4500 North 32nd Street, Suite 109
Phoenix, AZ 85018
Phone: 602-954-2200
Fax 602-956-4232
|
|