TWO FAMILIAR WAYS TO PROTECT PRODUCT DESIGNS, PLUS A THIRD WAY YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF AND CAN UNDOUBTEDLY AFFORD. Everyone wants a patent. It’s perfectly logical to want to protect a new product. Technical innovations help set you apart in a crowded marketplace and a patent prevents anyone else from offering your innovation for 20 years. But let’s be honest, [...]
Your Soon-to-be-Obsolete Guide to AI in the Patent World The best advice I heard this year was “If you aren’t using AI for an hour a day, you’re making a big mistake”. Maybe it was an hour a week. Half my usage is getting Grok to answer questions for my kids. Then they always want to ask his favorite food. Kids love AI and seem to treat it like just another [...]
I genuinely enjoy all the folks I’ve come to meet in this industry. In the dozens of years I’ve been at the SHOT Show, I’ve met the whole spectrum: The superstars who have the respect of the entire industry, including their competitors; the quiet geniuses who work behind the scenes to provide some of the greatest innovations; the tough guys who love a fight (even in [...]
This one goes back more than a few years, but it’s being resurrected because the issues are timeless, and it’s a little amusing looking back when I was just a bit feistier, at least in print. Email me if you have a good guess as to what year it first appeared. It was so tempting, but I didn’t dare poke the giant beast, even though I could have gotten away with it, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
