Attorney Zones: Steam roller effect

Today there are disadvantageous trends facing companies in the US. Small businesses are aware that they are involved in legitimate battles with amazing frequency. Many of these independent projects are small businesses that survive with a poor budget and are confronted with protecting intellectual property rights, from the name of the company to items to be produced and sold. The legal struggle for intellectual property rights has various influences on the general public. A civilian will always pay a price for a trial case for those who are deficient in countermeasures.

In order to understand the current battle, you must first understand what intellectual property is. Intellectual property is defined as "intellectual property, property acquired from work of intelligence, specific ideas, benches, secrets of commercial transactions, processes, programs, data, formulas, patents, copyrights, trademarks or applications, registration related to rights or registrations "He said: (1) What do you mean by the people's words? Intellectual property rights are commodities of commercial value such as new wallets protected by patents, trademarks and copyright laws.

Many business owners in the United States stipulate that intellectual property rights "have power to promote progress in science and technology" (Article 1, Article 8, Article 8) Author and inventor By ensuring exclusive rights to writing and discovering respect for their limited time,

It seems that even at the very beginning of our founding, we felt that we should have the right to own and use the customary exclusively, and to have the right to use and grant permission to others.

Protection by law

Today, there are three ways to protect intellectual property. These methods include patents, copyrights, and trademarks.

* The patent protects "exclusive right to process, design, or new invention". (3)

* Trademarks protect "names, symbols, or other devices that identify products". (Four)

* The copyright holder is "literary, music, dramatic, artistic work". (Five)

The cost of establishing these protection methods can be enormous. An excellent example of a fee to protect your work is a price tag attached to a patent ranging from about $ 400 to over $ 1,000. According to a law firm, the actual cost of submitting a patent on what is briefly described is about $ 2000, but complicated fees will be charged up to $ 10,000. (6)

Declaration of trademarks is generally cheap, but the process can still apply a fee of over $ 1,000 to $ 1,500 per application. (7)

The average investment in arts and crafts is $ 9,000. (8) Considering the requirements of city, county, state and federal level of business license, the cost of basic office supplies payment, the cost of creating websites or other marketing materials, and the cost of ordering necessity final There is little budget space to submit for these most fundamental protection under the Act to produce the product.

The story is not just the fee for registering patents. Many trials exchanging hands of huge amount of money can challenge all patents. As reported by law firms, the average cost of trial patent litigation can range from $ 500,000 to close to 2 million dollars, the amount of which is just one of the members! These costs can rise quickly if the patent attorney pays a cost of about 200 to 500 dollars per hour, so diligent work by litigation personnel is necessary. (9)

Importance of intellectual property

People often underestimate how intellectual property rights are vital to business. The media has examples of battles over intellectual property rights, covering serious areas ranging from suspicious copies to explicit theft.

By looking at the headlines of recent media, we can better understand the problem at hand.

At the beginning of the year, Nike, Inc. has officially announced the "formulation of a minor threat-inspired tour poster", "a member of the iconic Washington DC, a minor threat of hardcore acts and Ian MacKaye's Dischord Records" I made an apology; s album cover. "Why did 10 Nike, Inc. apologize? MTV said," Nike's major threat skateboard demo tour (a poster for advertising the latest SB shoes) is not only the minor threat logo, but also the band's 1981 It is an image from the year's self title EP and the complete discography of 1988. "(10) The information source has not published further information on this topic.

Another example of this intellectual property infringement can be found in Margaret Nicole and Abercrombie & Fitch Company in Manhattan.

According to the New York Times, Abercrombie & Fitch had sold the same bags as Margaret Nicole of Manhattan and Margaret Nicole of Nicole Dreyfuss of the Manhattan, "said Abercrombie lawyer Frank J. New York's law firm Colucci & Umans Colucci pulled a wallet and agreed to a settlement "(11)

Protect the store

However, these stories are rare. For the majority of small and medium enterprises, there is no way to fight big companies as the design is stolen or litigation threatens human life. Instead, they can not afford to defend themselves, so they are forced to hand over the results of their diligence to a huge enterprise.

A typical case of this case would be the current lawsuit against a small online retailer Virgin Threads, LLC.

Virgin Threads, LLC was founded in August 2004 and is currently in lawsuit by Virgin Enterprises. As a media analyst reports, "The enterprise group of Virgin Enterprises, Richard Branson is trying to stop others from using the word" Virgin "for name and domain name" (12)

According to the complaint filed in this federal law, Virgin Enterprise said, "VIRGINTHREADS.COM, VIRGINFASHION.COM, VIRGINCIGAR.COM, VIRGINPUBLISHING.COM, I-VIRGIN.COM domain name from the VELGIN mark, and I have a specific intention to make consumers misunderstand "(13)

The owner of Virgin Threads, LLC, Jason Yang talks about his current situation. "I was planning to register Virgin Threads right away, but in November 2004 I was subject to a lawsuit and my lawyer tells me the name until after the lawsuit."

When asked if he would try to abandon the household's recognition of Virgin's name, Yang replied, "No, I never thought of being similar to Virgin Enterprise.

As Mr. Yang keeps trying to close his website, the cost of battle continues to rise. For this reason, the Virgin Threads website has a new department called "Legal Fund". The unique design that is sold in this section earns money for defense against Virgin Enterprise, and part of each sale goes to the Virgin Threads Legal Defense Fund.

Despite the recent headline and media attention, the bulk of the consumer market remains unaware of these lawsuits and the dangerous trends they represent. Among those who know, many people do not recognize the real influence that arises as a result of these trials.

If we can leave current prejudices unconfirmed, consumers will fall into an unstable situation and look at alarming monopolistic gaze. Increased cost of protecting and defending intellectual property, along with costs to defend against recognized violations, makes it almost impossible to develop, while creating a highly hostile environment for small businesses to survive I will.

Because there are unbalanced resources available in each department of the enterprise, there is only a claim of infringement to bankrupt many of so-called "small people". This ability to eliminate competition from large companies directly from the beginning directly leads to domination in the market.

Market space control (or more clearly described as monopoly) has a direct impact on consumers in the form of limited options and high prices, but even in the famous 18th century British economist, Adam Smith says, "There is something every opportunity is best for monopoly price"

Loss of small business

If an exclusive monopoly is established, consumers are not only restricted to the selection of products, but also expelling the prices of imported goods can easily occur.

Many large companies are currently entrusting labor to other countries. "Forrester Research estimates that by 2015 3.3 million people in the US and 130 billion wages will be transferred not only to India but also to China, Russia, Pakistan and Vietnam." 14

Can we afford to lose small businesses? Here we will look closely at what small businesses (including 500 or fewer employees) brought to the United States.

Small and medium-sized enterprises

* Represent 99.7% or more of all employers.

* Employ more than half of all private sector employees

* Pay 44.5% of the US private salary total.

* Create 60 to 80% of net new employment every year.

* Create more than 50% of non-agricultural gross domestic product (GDP).

* 53% by home base and 3% by franchise. (15)

As these small and medium enterprises close down, the regional economy is suffering. The impact of these closures will have a ripple effect, bring about a higher unemployment rate and possibly influence the area of doubt without doubt.

One study argues that "social costs of unemployment can affect everything from mental health to the cost of social programs such as social security." [16]

As a society, it is obvious that we need to take measures to prevent the devastation of the economy in every field. We must act to protect small and medium enterprises from extinction.

Current systems need to be examined and modified so that small businesses can protect themselves and their intellectual property. Companies need to be responsible for attempts to create monopolies, and with respect to the legal system, resource gaps must be resolved.

There is no simple solution, but there are routines that you can take to satisfy these requirements. But these routes will never be opened until this issue is accepted by both the citizen and the lawmakers.

It is time for this acknowledgment. It is time to end this steam roller effect.

References:

(1) "Intellectual Property". Law dictionary.
Merriam-Webster, 1996. Answers.com GuruNet Corp. 15th July 2005. http://www.answers.com/topic/intellectual-property

(2) Constitutional clause, http: //www.house.gov/Constitution/Constitution.html

(3) "Patent" Investopedia. Investopedia Inc., 2000. Answers.com GuruNet Corp. 15th July 2005 http://www.answers.com/topic/patent

(4) "Trademark". American Heritage® English Dictionary 4th Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com GuruNet Corp. 15th July 2005. http://www.answers.com/topic/trademark

(5) "Copyright" AmericanHeritage® English Dictionary Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com GuruNet Corp. 15th July 2005 http://www.answers.com/topic/copyright

10 http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1504875/20050628/index.jhtml?headlines=true

11 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/19/business/yourmoney/19bags.html

12 http://www.chillingeffects.org/weather.cgi?WeatherID=507

13 http://www.heratyhall.com/virginthreads.pdf

14 "History of outsourcing", (c) Terri Kelly, [http://www.globalenvision.org/library/3/702/]

15 http://www.sba.gov/advo/stats/sbfaq.html

16 http://www.solbaram.org/articles/clm502.html