Nondisclosure Agreements, or “Confidential Disclosure Agreements” as they are sometimes called (biotech companies seem to prefer the “CDA” designation), are some of the most common types of business contracts. Although they are often signed with only a cursory review, each one should involve as much review and reflection as any other contract. This is because
This is part two of two posts about how to make your website’s terms of service an enforceable contract. Part 1 was about getting user consent. This one is about making sure that your ToS isn’t an “illusory promise”. What is an “Illusory promise”? In order to form a contract, each side has to promise
Two important principles of contract law for terms of service are “meeting of the minds” and “illusory promise”. Those phrases may sound a bit meaningless, legal, and abstract. However, each one holds a common pitfall that can void an entire website’s terms of service – as if it didn’t exist at all.
This is a question that I get asked a lot; I’m happiest when we are asked before the name is “launched”, so that the business owner can assess the amount of trademark protection that is available when deciding whether to adopt a particular trade name. “Can My Business Name Be Trademarked?” is a question that is best
Part of doing a trademark application is to ensure they are not applying for something that is bound to fail. With respect to word marks in particular, is fairly easy to do a search first four names that a trademark examiner might find to be “confusingly similar”. If a previously registered trademark has a name
The very short answer is $1200. There are, of course, caveats and details. The first is that when I say “an attorney” I mean “me.” Other attorneys may differ. If you’re interested in talking about your trademark needs, to see if we might be a good attorney-client fit, then please contact me. Please bear in
It saves you time, and prevents procedural mistakes. Many business owners want to have an attorney file their trademark. It is comforting to have a member of the profession guiding you through the process. The USPTO forms can be confusing. There are many trademark concepts to understand, such as dates of first use, specimens, intent-to-use,
California Lawyer magazine did an article on virtual law firms this month, happy to have been one of the attorneys that they did a profile on. Click the image to read this post, and then you can see this link to it.
What should you think about when choosing a brand name? This isn’t necessarily a definitive list, but it is a three things to consider from a legal perspective. Actually it’s really two things: understanding the legal/marketing compromise of the mark strength, and then searching (both the internet and at the USPTO). 1) Consider the strength of the
I’m catching up on my CLE in advance of the February 2 deadline, and so I created an Excel spreadsheet CLE Tracker (<–download link) to track it by category and calculate the rate that I need to get it (i.e., I need to get a CLE hour every X days, or Y hours per day). It’s attached