Business Advice

TM Advice For New Brands

October 29, 2012

Our experts in trademark registration and enforcement contributed valuable advice to Brandaide.com, pointing out the Top 10 Branding Mistakes.

Entrepreneurs and trademark applicants take heed. It’s worth the read!

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Musicians: Double Your Royalty Income

October 11, 2012

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.

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Protect Your Intellectual Property

October 11, 2012

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 ?
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