Copyright Infringement Attorney Denver CO

Local resource for Copyright Infringement Attorney in Denver. Includes detailed information on local businesses that provide access to brand protection, copyright laws, as well as advice and content local copyright attorneys.
Eyeglasses Contacts Discount Eyewear Superstore
866-945-5346
2548 Champa St.
Denver, CO
SIGNS BY TOMORROW - DENVER SOUTH
303639-9969
2401 S. Colorado Blvd.
Denver, CO
SIGN A RAMA
303756-9780
2715 South Colorado Blvd.
Denver, CO
Achieve Web Design
(303) 690-1040
8 Internet Marketing
Aurora, CO
Signs By Tomorrow
(303) 650-6269
8785 Sheridan Blvd.
Westminster, CO
Fineline Signs & Graphics
(303) 293-9215
601 W 48th Avenue
Denver, CO
FRONT RANGE SIGN COMPANY
303946-0124
2620 West Second Avenue
Denver, CO
Alberta Development Partners
(303) 261-3740
5155 S Main St
Aurora, CO
Mile High Signs
(720) 933-1792
9201 E. Mississippi Ave, S-206
Denver, CO
Advertising Novelties Co.
303-980-5433
274 Union Blvd.
Lakewood, CO

Legal Influence And Marketing Decisions

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Lawyers are retained to minimize legal exposures and risks. Marketers are employed to sell more stuff. This is oversimplified but generally true. Lawyers can help marketers better understand trademark law, trade dress, copyright law, trade secrets and false or deceptive advertising.

Companies vary quite a bit in the power afforded their attorneys. Most use them to deal with corporate legal issues and agreements and contracts. At Hallmark, I was advised by my boss, a corporate officer, that legal advice was just that, advice. He recommended that I seek legal advice when appropriate but that I needed to weigh the consequences of my decisions based on my own judgment.

One area where organizations occasionally get confused about the need for legal influence on marketing decisions is that of brand architecture and naming.  The sole purpose of brands, sub-brands and product names is to simplify customers’ understanding of the entities with whom they are interacting. Ideally, these entities should make promises to their customers, stand for something compelling and have appealing personalities. They do not need to mirror legal entities or organizational divisions. Mirroring one or both of these is a very common mistake. Yes, legal contracts need to use legal names, but other than that, brands and other outward facing entities need only to make sense to customers. And, the simpler the architecture is, the more advantageous it tends to be.

I had one client whose entire management team felt constrained about how they could present their organization to its customers based on legal entities whose names made little sense to their customers. I was quite sure that there was no need for these constraints and was later able to confirm this with their legal staff. I have another client whose marketing executives indicate that much of what they recommend is rejected based on legal risks.

On occasion, I have witnessed managers using lawyers and legal advice as a smoke screen to nix things that they do not want to see happen. These managers exert their control over others by invoking the judgments of the legal department, whether the legal department was involved in the issue or not.

Regarding potentially misleading or deceptive advertising, sometimes it is legally misleading or deceptive and at other times it is just a harmless boast or puffery that no one interprets literally anyway.  If in doubt, your lawyers can help you determine the potential risks, if any.

Sometimes lawyers want all sorts of disclaimers to be added to marketing copy to minimize the organization’s legal risks. Some of this makes sense. Much of it doesn’t. Consider the impact of pharmaceutical company-type legal disclaimers making their way into the marketing copy of companies, brands and products in general. “You are buying this at your own risk. It contains chemicals that if breathed in excess may cause dizziness, asthma, brain damag...

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Protecting Your Brand: Copyright Law

While organizations don’t often pursue this protection, logos are typically protectable by copyright law. Make sure your organization, and not an outside person or agency, owns the copyright to your brand’s logo.

Advertising/marketing agencies will often include an assignment of rights, titles and interests (including copyright interests) to their clients in their letters of agreement.  While trademark infringement requires proof of “confusing similarity,” copyright infringement requires proof of “substantial similarity.”

Online legal interpretation is evolving, but in general, organizations whose brands are strong and well known (“famous brands”) can legally defend their names and other marks against unauthorized use in domain names and <META> tags.  (Playboy (unsuccessfully) and Estee Lauder (successfully) sued other sites for using their brand’s names or slogans in their site’s meta-tags.)

Other online legal issues include the following:

•    cybersquatting – people who register and warehouse domain names that are other party’s marks
•    for-pay search engines selling marks as keywords to businesses that don’t own the marks
•    spammers who use other mark’s e-mail addresses as return addresses for their solicitations.

Special Problems: Organizations that License and Franchise their Marks

Organizations that license and franchise their marks encounter added challenges to protecting their marks.  License ...

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Trademark and Brand Naming Q & A

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Choosing a new trademark is a thorny task for many companies. So we asked Tara Benson, Esq., a seasoned intellectual property attorney, for her thoughts on how to avoid the most common pitfalls. Benson is a senior member of the trademark practice group at Giordano, Halleran & Ciesla, P.C. During her career, she has handled trademark work for such clients as Tazo Teas and Amazon.com; and also served as in-house counsel for Library Video Company/Schlessinger Media, the leading distributor and producer of educational media.

Q: Tara, it often seems that tension between marketing and legal departments is the start of trademark troubles. Do you agree?

Absolutely. In my experience, marketing departments often gravitate towards a mark which describes the product or service. Descriptive marks ensure that the customer can easily identify the product. Unfortunately, descriptive marks will not likely win the right to be registered and probably don’t do much to distinguish your product in the marketplace.

Q: So does that mean you should avoid descriptive marks at every turn?

In short, yes, it is best to avoid them whenever possible. The strongest marks (and those that are able to achieve trademark protection) are fanciful, arbitrary or suggestive marks. A fanciful mark is a word, which has no meaning aside from its use as a trademark, such as Kodak or Exxon, while arbitrary marks are existing words with meanings that are generally unrelated to the product with which they are used, such as Apple for computers. Finally, suggestive marks are those which suggest the identity of a product, but do not merely describe the product (e.g. Coppertone for suntan lotion). It is important that a marketing department be aware of these necessary qualities while brainstorming names for new products or services.

Q: Do clients become emotionally attached to names they are considering?

Yes, often companies will create an internal development name for a product or service. Sometimes people will become so attached to this development name that they are not willing to part with it once the product or service is ready to be launched. Falling in love with an internal development name prior to completing a full trademark search and legal review is one of the most common problems which companies encounter. I always stress the importance of completing a trademark review on a mark before company employees become too attached to a name.

Q: What other pitfalls do you see?

One is the selection of a name that is simply too confusingly similar to that of a competitor. Selecting a name that is too similar to a competitor not only impairs a company’s ability to federally register that name, but also may result in a trademark infringement lawsuit against the company. Companies should always strive to select names that are easily distinguishable from those of their competitors.

Q: Our surveys show that 20% of large companies use emplo...

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