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Tag: speakers
reform now!
If there was ever any question that we need reform in the legal industry and within the legal education industry – this is it: http://tinyurl.com/4gnzy2
A law school professor is suing saying that student notes violate his copyright. Maybe he need to talk to one of the copyright professors about the fair use statute…
There’s also the question of what kind of example this sets for law students. Scheeeesh!!!! It’s this kind of stuff that is ruining the reputation of the legal profession.
If he’s using another lawyer (probably not… although many professors aren’t licensed to practice anywhere, and some have never even taken the bar exam), I’m disappointed the professor’s lawyer took the case.
Copyright for Authors and Speakers
Most of you know that your work is covered under the US Federal Copyright laws the instant your ideas become tangible. That’s wonderful news, but it sometimes leads to a false sense of security for creative people.
The problem is that if someone uses your material without permission, you might have a righteous beef legally, but not have an economic justification for pursuing your legal rights. This is because infringement of unregistered copyrights requires you to prove “actual damages” and pay your own legal fees. Actual damages are hard to prove, and in many cases will not cover the legal fees.
If you pay the $35-45 to register your copyright, then you can ask for statutory damages without proving actual damages, and your attorney fees are on the table. This makes the Cease & Desist letter much more effective and shows you take your creativity seriously.
You should make it a point to do your own copyright registrations on all your creative work – at least the work that is core to your creative business. Do this yourself because the forms are easy and if you mess up, the Copyright office will tell you what you did, and while you’ll have to refile in many cases, the lesson only costs you the $35-45 bucks.
You can find all the registration forms and great instructions at www.copyright.gov. If you need more help or need to enforce your copyrights, just let me know.
TM for Authors and Speakers
You may know that you cannot trademark the title of a single book or speech. So, how do you protect your brand?
Simple: you use the title of your book and speech as the brand for an entire service package. Then, instead of trying to register your trademark in the books (printed materials) classification, you register the brand in the education and entertainment services classification. Then enforce your mark if anyone enters either category.
Remember to always place the “TM” superscript next to your brand when you’re using the title AS a brand. This stakes your claim and puts people on notice that you intend this title to be an indicator of YOU as the source of the relevant goods and/or services.
Do NOT use the (R) superscript until you have a registration certificate from the United States Patent and Trademark Office in your hands.
Finally, note that a TM application has a filing fee of $275-325. These are non-refundable. So, I strongly encourage you to hire an experienced TM lawyer to handle the application for you. I’ve seen far to many examples of people trying to do these by themselves to save a few hundred dollars, then messing it up, and ending up spending far more than if they would have just hired help in the first place.
Feel free to submit questions.