Role of an Intellectual Property Lawyer in Today’s World
It’s an understatement to say that intellectual property lawyers are necessary for modern-day businesses and companies. They protect a brand’s trademark and company’s trade secrets while ensuring that no one infringes on their client’s intellectual property. Their importance and invaluable service are even more needed now that technological breakthroughs gave birth to new and unique business ideas. If you and your business need to protect your competitive advantage, The Myers Law Group suggests that you hire an Intellectual Property lawyer on retainer.
What needs intellectual protection?
Anything of economic value you consider as your invention or brainchild needs intellectual protection. It could be your brand, innovations, technological breakthrough, trade secret, business model, secret recipe, books, a manuscript of screenplays, or any copyrighted work.
The ratio behind the intellectual property law is quite simple — the property owner has full authority over the object they own. In civil law, ownership of real estate or personal property carries the right to use, sell, or dispose of the thing according to the owner’s will.
Unlike lands and personal effects, intellectual property is formless. It’s a product of the human mind and only takes the tangible form after they’re processed. However, even if the idea is not visible to the naked one, it’s considered one’s property, most especially after it’s converted into tangible objects of economic value.
An intellectual property lawyer can help file a patent or copyright their client’s intellectual property rights (IPR). He can also run after individuals and entities that try to infringe upon such ownership and judge them before the court.
How else can an Intellectual Property lawyer help you?
Aside from those mentioned above, an Intellectual lawyer can also help ensure that you have filed the proper documents in the appropriate regulating bodies. There are three forms of intellectual property rights, and they are copyright, patents, and trademarks.
Lawyers can assist in the IPR registration process
Though you don’t need to register your literary work to be entitled to a copyright, you might need to do so when you’re suing somebody to enforce such a right. Before you file the copyright infringement case, you need to submit and register your work before the U.S. Copyright Office. You need to wait at least six to nine months before your copyright protection is released. Your lawyer can help you tackle these processes.
As for trademarks and patents, you’ll need to register your brand’s trademark before the U.S. Patent and Trademark office and wait for nine to 12 months for your trademark to be registered. Again, your lawyer can also help you get through this process smoothly.
Lawyers can help stop infringers from causing harm to your IPR
IPR is protected because it is of high economic value to the owner. Businesses profit from their brand and inventions. Writers, musicians, playwrights, and authors earn money from the sale and royalties of their brainchild. If someone simply copies or steals these ideas from them, they can suffer significant financial loss. To keep this from happening, lawyers can do any or all of these legal remedies:
- Draft and send takedown notices to infringers on the internet.
- Draft and issue cease and desist orders to stop the infringer from causing more harm.
- Sue the infringer even without prior notice.
The first two are more amicable ways of resolving the issue, while the latter serves as a stern message to any infringer that they will have to pay for the economic damage they caused.
The lawyer can pursue a case even without prior notice because the tangible products of the ideas of the copyright, trademark, and patent owners serve as ‘notice in rem.’ Being a notice to the world that someone is in legal ownership of a literary piece, invention, or brand, anyone who steps on such ownership can be held liable for infringement before the law.
Takeaway
There are plenty of ways an intellectual property lawyer can help your business. They have the technical knowledge and relevant experience in this province of property law, so you can be assured that they know the ins and outs of copyright, trademark, and patent laws. If you need help in any of these aspects, don’t hesitate to contact a reliable and seasoned IPR lawyer.
