IPfever

Atlanta law firm for global business

Category: Intellectual Property

  • Trademark Registration – IPfever Way

    Trademark Registration – IPfever Way

    I guess you can file a trademark application yourself, which will cost a bit over $200 in government fees (for a long-term cost analysis, see https://www.ipfever.com/how-much-does-a-trademark-registration-cost/ ).
    Here, the worst case scenario is you get a rejection letter (called Office Action). If there’s a mistake, you can amend it. In other cases, you can probably go around the problems. These will cost extra time and fees, but still you save money by not paying service/attorney fees.

    Or you can use an online service, adding extra service fees (like $69 seen on today’s Google Search ads) to the calculation.
    Here, you will likely save a good amount of time, and the process will be much enjoyable than filling out the government-designed application. Yup, it’s fine printed and for online versions, you will meet the old internet. Long story short, I think any help is better than no help.
    Don’t expect a legal guidance though. You can hope the computer will one day replace the attorneys; it’s not today guys. There are other reasons, too. For example, the service would constitute an Unauthorized Practice of Law if it renders a legal advice without a license.

    Alternatively, you can find a licensed attorney and pay much more.
    Well, you saw this coming, right? An attorney defending the merit of legal counsel! Don’t worry. That’s not the point. I totally believe that you can DIY. The problem is that you will never know if you’re doing it right.
    Starting from “Is my name/logo/mark trademarkable?” to “What’s the best way to protect my business interest?,” all entrepreneurs come across questions regarding trademark. However, lawyers typically don’t like answering piecemeal questions.
    Thankfully, IPfever is where you can ask questions and seek help from attorneys; you do everything you can do yourself and leave only the rest to the attorneys.

    You can request a free consultation. Also, you can simply choose to browse through articles from how to file a trademark application to basics to learn even when you don’t have your trademark yet or haven’t started your business.

  • Choosing a Right Name for your Brand or Product

    Choosing a Right Name for your Brand or Product

    Zara, which is a Fast Fashion brand like Forever 21, boasts that it takes only 10 to 15 days for an initial product design to reach their retail stores through international manufacture and logistics. In this fast-paced environment where a product can be copied within a few days and mass produced, a superb product design and packaging warrants only half the success.

    Turning a customer satisfaction from a superb quality and brand into a repurchase requires marking of the product with a unique and legally protected name. Such name is called a trademark, and it includes not only brand names and product names but also logo images, patterns, phrases, colors, and so on.

    Then, how you decide what to use as a trademark? In this article, brand and product names are discussed.

    1. Try to Stand Out from Competition

    If your beauty supply store is named “ULTA” or “SEPHORA”, you are clearly in trouble. Likewise, you should avoid choosing a name that creates a confusion among consumers even if it is newly minted by you. “Rihanna’s Beauty” is a good example of such confusing tenor.

    To prevent this kind of trouble, you must conduct a market research beforehand. By far the most effective and economical way is using internet search engines. You can use Google, Naver, and so on to scheme through names and marks that are used in your relevant market.

    Avoid names that are similar to existing ones, and you should not use an identical one to other’s trademark at no circumstance.

    2. Avoid Generic Names

    Those words and phrases commonly used in your field of expertise lack the potential to be a good trademark.

    Words such as “3X”, “16-inch”, “Braid”, “Ghana”, and “Pageboy” are general terminologies referring a number of goods in a single package, hair length, product type, hairdo, and so on. These general terminologies must be preserved for a free use among all commercial actors, and the trademark law accordingly limits trademark rights in such cases. Hence, you should not use generic terms unless it is necessary.

    Oftentimes, using a general term is easy to memorize and facilitates a quick understanding of the characteristics of goods, but there are different ways to achieve the same.

    For example, iPad, a tablet computer from Apple, Inc., uses the word “pad” to depict a “tablet computer”. Despite being a common word referring to a book of thin sheets, a “pad” was not associated with a tablet computer at the time.

    This is how you should go when you are considering a common word for your trademark: distancing from its original meaning or using an untraditional spelling.

    A billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk established a construction company specialized in tunneling, the Boring Company, in which boring means digging a tunnel. At the same time, it could also mean a company that are not interesting, poking some fun.

    3. Unique Wording that Describes Your Product

    When it comes to a Samsung smartphone Galaxy Note, the word “note” denotes that this particular type of smartphone has a bigger screen and includes a stylus pen. Again, “note” was a terminology that mobile computer industry did not find a common use, so this could be a good choice.

    To explain further, let’s use an imaginary wig product, 100% Hand-tied Human Hair Pageboy Lace Wig as an example.

    • First of
      all, there are obvious characteristics of goods that a trademark
      needs not contain, such as the product type wig.
    • While 100%
      Hand-tied and Lace are important features of the product, the
      wording is a poor choice for a trademark. You can have a much
      stronger trademark by devising unique phrases such as Artisan’s
      Lacework, Tied-on-Lace, On-lace-handywork, and so on.
    • A fanciful
      name can be used instead of human hair. Keratin, a type of protein
      found in hair, is already familiar with consumers, and words like
      natural and organic can set a positive tone for your product.
    • Pageboy is a
      style that could be more efficiently and accurately illustrated by a
      drawing or photo. However, you may develop variety of unique
      wordings that sets your brand apart from the pack, such as Pagegirl
      instead of Pageboy and Peige instead of Page. Note, Peige may signal
      a specific color Beige.

    While product names can tell what kind of product a good is, they should serve as a source identifier. In other words, consumers should be able to learn from which manufacturer, distributor, or seller a certain good is originated.

    Ideally, a good trademark should tell a consumer that the product in her consideration is this “Artisan’s Lacework – Peige” among many other Pageboy style 100% human hair hand-tied lace wigs.

    4. Tips

    • Be creative
      when naming a product. “Kodak” is a word created by its
      founder to serve as a trademark. Unique and easy to memorize.

    • A common
      word has a potential to be a great trademark. Office electronics
      company “Brother” transformed a common word into a great
      and distinctive trademark.
    • You may
      consider a terminology uncommon in the technical field or a spelling
      variation. Lyft, a Uber service competitor, uses a misspelled common
      word “lift” which means giving a ride.

    Words or phrases including ARTISAN’S LACEWORK, TIED-ON-LACE, ON-LACE-HANDYWORK, KERATIN, NATURAL, ORGANIC, PAGEGIRL, and PEIGE, appearing in this article, were created to explain relevant legal concepts and may be inappropriate for use as a trademark. All content and information in this article does not constitute a legal counsel or advice at any circumstance.

  • How often do you Google your trademark?

    How often do you Google your trademark?

    How do you react to a sight of a retail store that just launched? Early adopters enjoy using a product or service before other people do, but most of the consumers tend to be a lot less passionate about embracing a new store although its sight might pop among aging stores.

    That is why many businesses spend fortune to run commercials on TV and place advertisements on publications to familiarize their trademarks to customers. Since an excessive amount of advertisements is pouring in through various media, most modern consumers consider the ads as something they want to avoid as much as possible.

    Accordingly, alternative marketing tactics, including internet marketing, is considered much more efficient than those traditional advertisements nowadays. In addition to running official websites and social network accounts, many businesses are employing even newer internet marketing tactics including sponsoring popular bloggers or social network accounts in an effort to expose their products and trademarks to their customers.

    These methods do not expose the trademarks to potential consumers who are involuntarily watching the commercials but make them actively seek the contents containing their trademarks. As a result, even though the content might be identical, which may be a summary of product feature, it becomes the information that was researched by themselves instead of an empty statement by the one who wants to sell products or service to them.

    In fact, many consumers utilize internet search to research the information about or the reputation of an unfamiliar business or a new product, and they typically type in a trademark for the search. If you google a trademark of a business, it is likely that the official website of the business appears on the first page of the search results, which might not be true when keywords are used for the search of the business.

    When the business has no official website, a review post by popular review sites such as Yelp and Google Maps would populate the top results. As opposed to an official website, the contents of review websites cannot be controlled by the business, so they can be easily tainted by few unfair reviews that are written by angry customers.

    Let alone an official website, even a review of the business could be missing on the first page of the search result, in which case customers might feel very suspicious about the legitimacy of the business. More often than not, it gives a bad impression to customers. If you carefully examine those instances, you find problems within the trademarks themselves.

    For example, a bad trademark may only include a name of the town or a common term used in the trade, like “Chicago”, “beauty”, and “supply”. You can easily expect that the search result for “Chicago beauty supply” would include all beauty supply stores in the region. There are other instances such as using a description of the product or service as a trademark such as “Luxury Beauty Supply”. These names will unlikely be distinguished by search engines from common keyword searches and return generic information that are not specific to the business.

    Considering the bad impression to internet savvy consumers caused by choosing an inappropriate trademark, you should determine whether your choice of words could bring about a strong trademark even before you start using it. Even if you have already started using it, you should continuously monitor whether other businesses are misappropriating your trademark or there are similar trademarks causing confusion among customers. Regular monitoring helps laying a solid foundation for your trademark.

    You can start monitoring by simply typing in your trademark in the Google search box. The result will not only reveal whether the mark you want to use can become a strong trademark in the future but also whether the trademark you are using is being misappropriated by others.

    It’s never too late. Google your trademark today!

  • The Hidden Strength of Walmart

    The Hidden Strength of Walmart

    Although Amazon is reigning in the online retail market, if you compare the annual retail sales figures of 2016, Walmart’s $363 billion in annual revenue overshadowed Amazon’s $77 billion. This is a meaningful success in the offline retail market where many retail giants are fiercely competing.

    What in the earth makes Walmart to score such a high annual sales revenue which is more than twice the combined number of (a) $70 billion by Target, a discount store like Walmart and (b) $86 billion by Costco, a membership store like Sam’s Club by Walmart?

    Walmart is well known for its rigorous standard for choosing suppliers, efficient logistics and store management, and a simple but effective business principle of serving the customers with a lower price, among others, that are all contributing to the success of Walmart.
    Surprisingly, it is a less known fact that Walmart played a major role in the retail adoption of barcode technology.

    Anyone who remembers the days when barcodes did not exist would easily appreciate how much the barcode technology saves time and effort in sales of goods. Without the Universal Product Code (“UPC”) which was introduced to the retail business by Walmart, barcode could have been just a type of machine-readable code for a proprietary computer system.
    In parallel, Walmart recently began to require all suppliers to use radio frequency identification (“RFID”) smart tags to display product information on their shipment. Smart tags convey product information over the air more efficiently than barcodes and allegedly improves the flow of the logistics as well as the inventory management in the retail stores.
    Of course, barcode is not invented by Walmart. Just like smart tags, Walmart is on the side of adopting and utilizing the technology developed by a third party. That is not a surprise considering that standardization leads to cost savings for the entire retail industry and that an exclusive technology developed and adopted by a retailer would not likely benefit the entity in the market competition.

    Nevertheless, Walmart is allocating a lot of resources in procuring patents, which is unprecedented in its 50 years of history.

    Based on the publication date of patent applications, Walmart applied for only 26 patents for the two-year period from 2012 to 2013 whereas it already applied for 201 patents from 2016 to date. Simply put, patent is a legal right to an exclusive use of a technology invented independently, so the sudden increase goes against the very idea of standardization.

    The phenomenon can be understood by taking a closer look at Walmart’s patents. For an example, one of the Walmart’s patents issued in 2017, the U.S. Patent No. 9,470,532, claims an exclusive right to a navigation system that help customers to find goods in a store.

    This navigation system provides an assistance to shoppers by (1) allowing customers to input product information they are searching via mobile devices; (2) displaying the location of the product on a store map; and (3) marking locations of comparable or associated goods on their route.
    Once this technology is commercialized, Walmart could make up for its shortage in the staff on the retail floor, improving shopping experience significantly. That is not to say that this kind of service requires an investment in advanced technology as it only requires common smartphones and inventory management applications readily available to small and midsize businesses. Notwithstanding, for about 20 years, any business who wants to adopt the navigation system in their store would have to obtain license from Walmart or just sit and wait till the patent expires.

    There are other examples such as a mobile app validating the age of purchasers of age-restricted items (U.S. Pat. No. 9,665,896) and a system delivering shopping carts upon the request by shoppers via a mobile app (U.S. Pat. Application No. 6,619,546). In sum, Walmart patents of recent involve not the profound principles of science but ideas for a better shopping experience.

    These ideas could have been the technology of the future, but with the internet and personal mobile devices, you can bring them to life without dedicated devices or extra infrastructure. Walmart is now expanding its patent portfolio to exclude others from using some of them.

    In fact, from a design or packaging idea to a unique placement of goods in retail spaces and a promotional or loyalty program ideas, if it is noble, it has a potential to be patented. Once patented, you can have an edge in retail services and prevent others from misappropriating your own idea.

    Often an amazing and groundbreaking idea becomes a mundane thing because everybody is copying it so fast. When you come up with a great idea, you should (1) determine whether the idea can develop into an effective and financially valuable patent, (2) find a way to protect the idea appropriately, and (3) acquire a legal right that can ensure a lasting success.

  • Amazon Suggests Branding for All

    Amazon Suggests Branding for All

    Approaching the 2017 holiday shopping season, the e-commerce giant Amazon’s stock price is heading to $1,200. Amazon.com, often quoted as “The Everything Store”, reportedly accounts for 46% of the entire online retail sales.

    An interesting thing about shopping at Amazon.com is that you do not particularly notice the items sold directly by Amazon. All items sold at Amazon receive the same treatment, and the same format applies to all product pages. The product order is determined by objective statistics like sales, rating, and price. Quite often, items sold by third-party sellers are bestsellers or Amazon’s Choice.

    As such, consumers can gather reliable product information and compare them conveniently, finding little reason to go another place to shop. In addition, since all the retailers who sell identical products are competing for the lowest price in real time, you will likely find a great deal.

    On the other hand, the price competition among online retailers is not the merriest news for the manufacturers and offline retailers. Even worse, if a product sells well, then there appear hordes of copycats selling similar products with look-alike photos and descriptions. That certainly induces angry moments for companies who went all the way to market a new product.

    In the Online Space, Branding is Especially Important.

    Consumers do not possess means to tell whether an article was manufactured in the same production line or not, so they refer to brand labels. Without branding, there is no way to distinguish your products from others’ similar goods. Your investment on quality assurance and customer service will be rewarded only if you have a brand name that consumers remember.

    For this reason, retailers let alone manufactures and wholesalers often create their own brands and sell branded items at Amazon.com. Especially, standardized products with little variation and goods that do not require special manufacturing technique or know-hows often get branded by retailers.

    Amazon recognized the importance of branding early on and created “Amazon Brand Registry” to help companies to protect their brands. Once registered, the companies who own brands can efficiently monitor and control products marked with their brand names and logos; now Amazon is requiring brand owners to register their brands with the United States Patent and Trademark Office first, for which I get an increased number of inquiries.

    Even if you sell only via offline channels, you need a U.S. trademark registration to protect your names in the online space. For example, if a retailer opens an Amazon Seller account in a name well known as a local beauty supply store, consumers in the local area may make online purchases relying on the local retail store’s good will. This is an outright trademark infringement, but without a trademark registration you may not stop them easily.

    Trademark registration is a simple but important legal process.

    If you understand the process and prepare accordingly, you can greatly reduce the cost of registration. You may visit the USPTO website to learn about the process. For your information, I estimated the typical cost and time required for the following hypothetical situations.

    1. If you are registering a mark that is already in use,
    • You need one or two days to gather relevant information and evidences of your use. Most of all, you need pictures of your product, advertisements, and logo image, among others, and you need to confirm that the mark meets legal requirements.
    • Filling out an application form takes only minutes (up to an hour for a novice applicant) using the Trademark Electronic Application System by the USPTO for free1. You can use your credit card to pay online for the application fees, which are around $250 in most cases.
    • In three to four months, the examination begins, and in a month your trademark can be officially registered.
    1. If you are registering a mark that you intend to use in the future,
    • Although the process is not too different, you probably want to consult a professional2 about the appropriateness of your intended mark i.e. whether the mark will be legally enforceable. A short consultation that costs only 20 minutes of your (and your attorney’s) time can be extremely productive.
    • You need to provide an evidence of your actual use within a required period, which is usually 6 months, to complete the registration process.
    1. If you already have a USPTO registered trademark,
    • Trademark registration must be renewed, but many trademark owners fail to do maintenance and end up abandoning their rights.
    • Regardless of a continued use, the registration can be cancelled unless you pay maintenance fees (from $100 to $425) at 5-10 years interval as prescribed by the USPTO.

    Now, small to mid-size retailers can reach the national market thanks to the advancement of logistics and order fulfilment services. This also means even if you are focusing on a local market, you need to compete with retailers and wholesalers across the country.

    If you have not registered your trademark or only registered with the state government, you should take steps to protect your brand and your customer’s trust with a USPTO trademark registration.

    1. Online trademark registration websites charge around $50 fees for online filing, but anyone can use the USPTO online application system online for free. ↩︎
    2. Most Intellectual Property (IP) attorneys can provide competent consultation on trademark issues. ↩︎
  • Google vs. Uber: Case Study for the Beauty Suppliers

    Google vs. Uber: Case Study for the Beauty Suppliers

    Lately, the automotive industry is under a fierce competition for developing autonomous (self-driving) vehicles. Automotive companies around the world, including GM and Ford of North America; Daimler, BMW, VW Group of Europe; Toyota of Japan; and Hyundai Automotive Group of South Korea, are just a few examples, and technological innovations to enable autonomous vehicles are brought about in Silicon Valley as well.

    Hence, it is not a surprise that the intellectual property (“IP”) lawsuit between Google and Uber, who are leading the research and development of autonomous vehicles in Silicon Valley, caught the public’s attention. Google, through Waymo (an autonomous car development company owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc.), alleged that a former engineer of Google stole a large amount of computer files containing trade secrets and illegally provided them to Uber.

    Stealing technologies, know-hows, and customer information from competitors through industrial espionage or other illegal means are hardly new. However, the scope and extent of the damages that can be done by those illegal activities are ever increasing due to the advancement of data storage technology. News coverage on the issue is somehow limited to high-tech espionage across the borders like the semiconductor trade secrets sold to China, but the problem is not limited to big corporations or within the high-tech industry.

    For example, a design and specification of a new product, customer information, or production or purchasing information can be stored in a USB thumb drive and handed over to a competing business, which results in a substantial profit loss to a company or business owner. It is typical to have a non-disclosure agreement with employees for a relatively large company, but even without a non-disclosure, confidential information that has an economic value of its own can be protected by the trade secret law.

    Last year, the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 was enacted by the federal government, which is likely to bring many positive changes.

    An example of such change is the lawsuit between Google and Uber. This lawsuit is one of the first trade secret infringement lawsuits brought under the federal law and will likely become a precedent that could affect many cases to follow if it goes to the trial. Here comes the summary of the case.

    1. First, Google learned from its supplier that Uber’s LiDAR design is strikingly similar to Google’s patented technology. Autonomous vehicles recognize their surroundings through a LiDAR, which stands for Light Detection and Ranging.
    2. Google secured a forensic evidence that a former engineer, who now works at Uber, downloaded a large quantity of computer files related to the LiDAR technology while he was still working at Google.
    3. In response, Uber claimed that it developed its LiDAR technology independently, but without a hard evidence to support the claim, the evidences are in favor of Google’s claim of trade secret infringement.

    If Google prevails in the lawsuit, the court may issue an injunction that forbids Uber from utilizing the LiDAR technology, which would likely hamper Uber’s development of a self-driving car. Considering the economic value of the LiDAR technology, which is said to be more than a billion dollars, the monetary damages can be a considerable burden to Uber. In addition, depending on the results of a separate criminal trial, the engineer can face an imprisonment up to ten years or heavy fines.

    Now, what would be the lesson for the beauty supply industry that can be learned from the Google vs. Uber case? You look at IP litigations worth billions of dollars or the litigation cost over millions of dollars let alone the cost of security systems to protect trade secrets, and you quite reasonably think you cannot afford a trade secret. Nevertheless, there are measures you can take to have your sensitive information protected as a trade secret at almost no cost.

    First, you need a thoughtfully drafted confidentiality policy such as “the customer list and the pricing information of products are confidential and must be disclosed only to the owner and the manager during two years from the creation of the relevant information.” You will not prevail at the court with an overbroad policy statement like “everything related to the business is confidential.” By simply placing a policy statement on the first page (or header/footer) of relevant documents, you can officially set forth the policy.

    Second, work computers and storage devices such as laptops and flash drives must be owned by the company, and you should restrict the use of employees’ personal devices or accounts to access or store company data. Without such policy, it would be hard to pinpoint the records of access and download related to illegal activities.

    Third, when you notice a breach of confidential information, you should preserve the evidence and report to the authority as quickly as possible. (Reference: Reporting Intellectual Property Crime) You will need to file a civil action against the perpetrator for an injunction or to claim monetary damages, but individuals and organizations who misappropriate a trade secret with a criminal intent are also subject to criminal penalties.

    It is already proven by the experience of many companies and security experts that you can greatly reduce a trade secret infringement by educating employees about the seriousness of the offense and spending a reasonable time and effort to secure your confidential information.

  • What is a provisional application in patent?

    What is a provisional application in patent?

    A provisional patent application does not become an issued patent. It actually just sit in the USPTO without being examined for potential issuance. Then, what a provisional patent application do?
    It basically earns time to decide whether you should go forward with obtaining patent for an invention.

    How it goes?

    You basically disclose your invention in writing, send the document to the USPTO where it will be time-stamped, and your priority date for establishing “who invented first” is valid for a year.

    If you file a non-provisional application within the year, your application will undergo examination and eventually can get issued to become a patent.

    Why it matters?

    Well, you usually don’t know if your invention is going to be something you can and want to profit from at the time you come up with your invention. Provisional applications require lower cost to prepare (by lawyers) and file with the USPTO compared to non-provisionals. Hence, you save money while preventing others from taking your idea away.

    In practice,

    It could be a routine practice to file a provisional first, followed by a non-provisional in an almost full year. It just makes sense to be cautious before incurring a significant financial burden. However, in some cases, an inventor may intentionally delay the examination of the patent by filing provisionals because they believe the application has very low likelihood to become an issued patent.

    Lastly,

    As soon as you file a provisional application, your invention is “Patent Pending” just like non-provisional applications. It usually means that you can start disclosing and selling your invention without worries about someone running to the USPTO to steal your idea!

  • What is Trademark?

    What is Trademark?

    A trademark is a mark you use in order to identify your good or service.

    For instance, IPfever is a trademark as it’s associated with services and contents offered at IPfever.com. If a law professor wants to start a blog about IP, she shouldn’t name it IPfever. Such naming would mislead people to think that the blog was associated with IPfever.

    But, on the other hand, if a medical researcher encounters a feverish symptom related to Information Profession, she’s free to call it “IP fever,” to publish a paper titled “IP fever,” and so on. There’s no problem with such designation because the trademark IPfever, at the moment, has nothing to do with medical diagnosis.

    So, you can freely catch an IPfever, and you may sell an IPfever brand roasted coffees. But you may not provide an IPfever service if that’s related to what is offered on ipfever.com.

    That’s a brief overview of what trademark does and doesn’t. Let’s find out more.

  • What is Patent?

    What is Patent?

    Patent is an exclusive right to appropriate an invention.

    Patent is often considered a luxury to a small and midsize business. More often than not, you find out about the importance of patents after someone accuses you of a patent infringement. It could be a cease and desist letter or a service of process.

    Without an understanding of how patent works, you will never know if you are safe from patent lawsuits.

    The problem with a patent lawsuit is that it’s so expensive that most small businesses can’t afford it. What happens then? You enter into a settlement agreement to avoid going to the courthouse. In fact, this can be cheaper than winning the lawsuit after costly legal proceedings.

    Even worse, it could happen that:

    • you actually came up with the idea yourself, but didn’t apply for a patent;
    • you have no idea what are the infringing activities that the patent owner claims, or
    • the patent is just bogus (e.g. it’s a standard technique in your industry).

    Read more and avoid expensive mistakes for your business!

  • Intellectual Properties in Business

    Intellectual Properties in Business

    Virtually everything that gives your business a competitive edge is protected by the law.

    Your supplier list is a trade secret. Your company/brand names are trademarks. You can (and you should) patent your new and unique business/product ideas to prevent copycats. For many start-up companies, intellectual properties are all they have.

    Trademark and Patent

    It wouldn’t be fair if others can misappropriate the fruits of your hard work. For instance, when you keep your business know-hows confidential and they give you a competitive edge, they are protected by the trade secret law.

    Of course, there are steps you can take to protect your valuable IPs more securely. You often see “®” mark next to many trade and brand names. The “R” stands for “registered trademark“. Although registration is purely optional, it has become a standard practice for good reasons.

    What about “patent pending”? It means there’s a current patent application. By filing a patent application, you disclose your invention to the public in exchange for a legally sanctioned monopoly for a limited time. In other words, people will learn everything about your invention, but for about twenty years or so, nobody other than you can use that invention.

    The worst thing you can do is to do nothing.

    For example, unless you register your business name, your right to the name is limited to your current market. (That doesn’t sound good for start-ups, right?) Also, there’s nothing legally wrong about your competitors reverse-engineering what you’re selling in the market. Once they figure it out, you can’t stop them from copying it.