Business Law: Patent & Copyright

The “E8r8” columns below includes the PDF and html documents updated in Revision 8 of the Eighth Edition of the MPEP, dated July 2010. The documents updated in Revision 8 were the following: Blue Pages; Title Page; Chapters 300, 500, 1200, and 1700; Appendix R; and the Index

The Inventors Assistance Center (IAC) provides patent information and services to the public. The IAC is staffed by former Supervisory Patent Examiners and experienced Primary Examiners who answer general questions concerning patent examining policy and procedure.

The Electronic Business Center provides web application links, system news & help for the patent community. The following tools and web sites are available to aid you in your patent process.

What is a trademark or service mark?

In short, a trademark is a brand name. A trademark includes any word, name, symbol, device, or any combination, used, or intended to be used, in commerce to identify and distinguish the goods of one manufacturer or seller from goods manufactured or sold by others, and to indicate the source of the goods. A service mark is any word, name, symbol, device, or any combination, used, or intended to be used, in commerce, to identify and distinguish the ser

One of the most important things to consider in using someone else's work is its copyright status. To help the user determine if something is covered, Laura Gasaway has prepared "When Works Pass into the Public Domain," a helpful table that simplifies the issue of when a copyrighted work is no longer covered by copyright restrictions based on its date of publication.

Increasingly, university and research libraries are being inundated with information that has been created in digital format and transmitted and accessed via computers. As the number of collections in digital formats increase exponentially, more and more libraries and information providers are facing a number of unique challenges presented by this relatively new medium.

Google and the USPTO have entered into an agreement to make bulk patent and trademark information available to the public at no charge

The purpose of this tutorial is to give users a hands-on, interactive patent searching experience utilizing the United States Patent and Trademark Office's website.

A Patent Law Blog

Information about key issues that the Copyright Committee monitors, including information about the following topics:

* Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA)
* Database Protection
* Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)
* Fair Use Doctrine
* First Sale Doctrine
* Orphan Works
* Section 108 link to external website

The Library Copyright Alliance (LCA) consists of three major library associations — the American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, and the Association of College and Research Libraries. These three associations collectively represent over 300,000 information professionals and thousands of libraries of all kinds throughout the United States and Canada. These three associations cooperate in the LCA to address copyright issues that affect libraries and their patrons. For