How to Pick Trademarks That Help You Sell, and Won't Get You Sued One of the most fun parts of my law practice is helping clients pick trademarks. I don’t charge extra if I come up with an idea you love enough to use on a new product, or for your new company. I always promise that some day when my portfolio of successful brand picks is impressive enough, I’ll put a [...]
Reality Check: The Bubble I’ve Busted a Thousand Times The classic newbie inventor has a good idea, falls in love with it, and wants to sell it to a big company. That NEVER happens, almost. Here’s what I counsel clients a dozen times a year: your odds of success increase vastly the farther along you are with your invention, your patent, your product, and your [...]
Too Big to Fail? Remington’s Bizarre “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” Campaign It was fourteen years ago that I wrote about one of our industry friends playing an interesting voicemail at the SHOT Show. Consider all that has changed since then. These friends are innovators, with some valuable patents in their portfolio. Because Remington liked one of their inventions, [...]
Branding Strategy for My New Product Finally, I can now reveal how a trademark attorney picks brands, and even goes a bit overboard to maximize the potential value of the venture. It’s all about my hex key tool invention concept I wrote about some time ago. To recap, I used to get irritated with needing two Allen wrench sets and never knowing whether a socket head [...]
A typical marketing consultant would tell me I’m crazy to reveal the secrets in this month’s newsletter, but I have to be honest with my readers: Y’all worry too much*. *Yes, you might have detected a change in my language since our relocation to Texas now more than 10 years ago. DFW is now our home port. The classic marketers say that the two greatest [...]
The Surprises and Secrets of Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA) Photo Credit: Oleg Volk In the patent world, one of the most important, yet surprisingly overrated, issues is secrecy. Yet while it’s a needless fear for many, it can make sense to protect yourself when you have to trust someone else with your secrets. An NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) is also known as a [...]
