Informative Articles

“By Cheryl L. Hodgson“

Trademark Scam Solicitations have become common place. Have you received an invoice for a trademark fee but it’s not from the USPTO? Chances are you’ve been targeted by a scam.  The Trademark Office does not send out billings for watch services, or services for renewing or maintaining a registration. 

Trademark applicants and registrants who put their addresses on file should know that their information is on public record, opening them to scam invoices by official-looking government entities.

As legal professionals, Hodgson Legal maintains a calendaring system and notifies clients in advance of deadlines, helps clients set up legitimate watch services and works to enforce & maintain the trademark.

For more info regarding watch services and the tactics used to target clients, see a recent article referencing Hodgson Legal on Brandaide.com: Watch the Watcher

Click here for a PDF of numerous trademark scams that Hodgson Legal has encountered. Look familiar? We hope not, but if you’ve been scammed, we’re here to help.

By Cheryl L. Hodgson”

ROYALTIES:  usage-based payments made by one party (the “licensee”) to another (the “licensor”) for the right to ongoing use of an asset, sometimes an intellectual property (IP).

Authors routinely transfer ownership of the copyright in creative works to music publishers, record companies, book publishers, and other distributors of copyrighted works.  

Recapture of valuable income producing copyrights will often double income from future U.S exploitation.

Artists say “Give us back our songs and masters!”

Here are three possible ways to recapture rights:

• Statutory- “It’s been nice, pay me what’s fair or I’m out of here.”
• Judicial- “You forgot to pay me so I’m taking my work and going home.”
• Contractual- “I had a great lawyer the first time around”

In this article, we explore the statutory, copyright termination right, found in the U.S. Copyright Act.  (Our next article explores the judicial and contractual means of recapture, in which we examine the precedent setting case of the “Louie Louie” master in which our firm recaptured rights to the Kingsmen masters, and a more recent jury verdict involving Hamilton Joe Frank and Reynolds. Read the judge’s decision in that Hodgson Legal precedent-setting case.

Knowing the answers to questions like these will put you on the path to protecting your brands, copyrights, and other valuable intellectual property.

1. Does your business model require disclosing confidential information to third parties, such as investors, suppliers, vendors or potential strategic partners?
2. Are you introducing potential buyers and sellers of a business or other assets to each other in anticipation of a transaction?
3. Are you involved in the purchase or sale of a business and preparing for due diligence to review the legal standing of intangible assets involved in the transaction?
4. Do you have a novel invention or business method that may quality for patent protection?
5. Do you have proprietary software to operate a site or systems in your company, or software which you license to others?
6. Do you know your competitors and what they are up to in their advertising?
7. Have you hired third parties to create content such as logos, copy, graphic design, or other artistic material? If so, do you have written agreements as to ownership ?

Michael Potter, founder of Eden Foods considers the Certified-Organic Label a fraud and refuses to put it on Eden Products.  Potter was interviewed in a recent New York Times article that brings into question whether consumers can trust or rely upon the “Certified-Organics” brand.  Eden Foods is one of the last remaining independent organic companies of any size, with most sizeable organic companies  having already been bought by “Big Food.”

Bear Naked, Wholesome & Hearty, Kashi: all three and more actually belong to the cereals giant Kellogg. Naked Juice? That would be PepsiCo of Pepsi and Fritos fame. And behind the pastoral-sounding Walnut Acres, Health Valley and Spectrum Organics is none other than Hain Celestial, once affiliated with Heinz, the grand old name in ketchup.

Over the last decade, since federal organic standards have come to the fore, giant agri-food corporations like these and others — Coca-Cola, Cargill, ConAgra, General Mills, Kraft and M&M Mars among them — have gobbled up most of the nation’s organic food industry. Pure, locally produced ingredients from small family farms? Not so much anymore.