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Definition
| A mark used by one or more persons, other than the owner, to certify the region, materials, mode of manufacture, quality, or accuracy of the owner's goods or services. When used by members of a cooperative, association, or other organization, such a mark is referred to as a collective mark. Examples of certification marks include the "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval" and "UL Tested." |
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Term
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Definition
| A mark used by members of a cooperative, association, or other organization to certify the region, materials, mode of manufacture, quality, or accuracy of the specific goods or services. Examples of collective marks include the labor union marks found on tags of certain products and the credits of movies, which indicate the various associations and organizations that participated in the making of the movies. |
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Term
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Definition
| The exclusive right of authors to publish, print, or sell an intellectual production for a statutory period of time. A copyright has the same monopolistic nature as a patent or trademark, but it differs in that it applies exclusively to works of art, literature, and other works of authorship, including computer programs. |
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Term
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Definition
| With respect to trademarks, a doctrine under which distinctive or famous trademarks are protected from certain unauthorized uses of the marks regardless of a showing of competition or a likelihood of confusion. Congress created a federal cause of action for dilution in 1995 with the passage of the Federal Trademark Dilution Act. |
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| Property resulting from intellectual, creative processes. Patents, trademarks, and copyrights are examples of intellectual property. |
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| A revocable right or privilege of a person to come on another person's land. |
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Term
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| A government grant that gives an inventor the exclusive right or privilege to make, use, or sell his or her invention for a limited time period. The word "patent" usually refers to some invention and designates either the instrument by which patent rights are evidenced ot the patent itself. |
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| A mark used in the sale or the advertising of services, such as to distinguish the services of one personfrom the services of others. Titles, character names, and other distinctive features of radio and television programs may be registered as service marks. |
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| The image and overall appearance of a product - for example, the distinctive decor, menu, layout, and style of service of a particular restaurant. Basically, trade dress is subject to the same protection as trademarks. |
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| A term that is used to indicate part or all of a business's name and that is directly related to the business's reputation and goodwill. Trade names are protected under the common law (and under trademark law, if the name is the same as the firm's trademark). |
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| Information or a process that gives a business an advantage over competitors who do not know the information or process. |
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Definition
| A distinctive mark, motto, device, or implement that a manufacturer stamps, prints, or otherwise affixes to the goods it produces so that they may be identified on the market and their origins made known. Once a trademarkis established (under common law or through registration), the owner is entitled to its exclusive use. |
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Term
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Definition
| Using a mark sufficiently similar to a protected trademark so that the mark (1) actually reduces the value of the protected trademark or (2) lessens the protected trademark's capacity to identify the protected trademark holder's goods or services. |
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Definition
| Using a protected trademark, or copying it to a substantial degree, without authorization. |
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| Fanciful, arbitrary, or suggestive trademarks are generally considered to be most distinctive, because the mark usually is unrelated to the nature of the product or service. |
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Definition
| Descriptive terms, geographic terms, and personal names are not inherently distinctive, but will be protected if consumers associate the specific term or phrase with the particular trademarked item. |
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Term
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Definition
| Registering someone else's name or trademark as a domain name (i,e,m Internet address), then offering to sell the registered domain name to that person. |
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Term
| Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers |
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Definition
| oversees the domainname system, accredits companies to register domain names, and manages an online arbitration system to resolve domain name disputes and approve online ADR providers. |
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Term
| Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act |
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Definition
| amended the Lanham Act to make it illegal for a person to "register, traffic in, or use" a domain name (1) if the name is identical or confusingly similar to another's trademark and (2) if the person registering, trafficking in, or using the domain name does so with the bad faith intent to profit from its similarity to the other's trademark. |
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Term
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Definition
| Words inserted in a web site's "key words" field in order to increase the likelihood that an Internet search engine, such as AltaVistaTM, Yahoo!TM, or LycosTM, will include that Web site in a key word search. |
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Definition
| Making, using, or selling another person's patented product, process, or design without permission. |
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| Using a copyrighted form or expression of an idea, even with slight variations, without permission. |
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Term
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| Unlike patents and trademarks, federal copyright law provides a statutory defense to a claim of copyright infringement. |
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Term
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Definition
| Loading a file or program into RAM constitutes making a "copy" for purposes of copyright law. |
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Term
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Definition
| In order to publish an electronic copy of a work previously published elsewhere, the would-be publisher must obtain permission from the person holding the copyright to the prior publication. |
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Definition
| Expands copyright infringement liability to persons (1) who exchange unauthorized copies of copyrighted works without the intent to profit thereby; and (2) who make unauthorized electronic copies of books, magazines, movies, or music for personal use. |
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Term
| Digital Millennium Copyright Act |
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Definition
| Creates civil and criminal penalties - subject to "fair use" - for circumventing encryption software or other antipiracy protection, and prohibits the manufacture, import, sale, and distribution of devices or services designed to circumvent such protection. |
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Term
| Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Networking |
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Definition
| Internet-based file sharing that involves numerous connected personal computers, rather than a Web server, enabling users to access files stored by other users of the same PC network. |
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Term
| Sharing Stored Music Files |
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Definition
| In recent years, the music industry has aggressively pursued copyright infringement claims against companies that distribute inline file-sharing softward that permits multiple compute or MP3 users to "pirate" a single paid-for copy of a CD, depriving the music industry and recording artists of royalties. Though the industry has seen success in the courts, free file-sharing technologies have proliferated despite (or, perhaps, because of) the industry's crackdown. |
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Term
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Definition
| The copyright of any work written by a citizen of a signatory country and any work first published in a signatory country regardless of the author's citizenship must be recognized by all signatory countries. |
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Term
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Definition
| Signed by representatives of more than 100 nations in 1994, this agreement established, for the first time in many countries, standards for the international protection of patents, trademarks, and copyrights for movies, computer programs, books, and music. |
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Definition
| A treaty allowing a U.S. company wishing to register its trademark abroad to do so with one application. |
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