Towards the end of this past summer, our Los Angeles business litigation lawyers filed a patent infringement lawsuit against the maker of a rival sleep mask. The lawsuit stems from what is known as a utility patent. Utility patents are the most common types of patents that the US Patent and Trademark Office (“PTO”) grants. They cover
Copyright law usually excludes basic items like clothes, silverware or furniture from copyright protection because they are strictly utilitarian items. If the law protected these types of things, the fear is that it would limit people’s options to obtain basic items since there would be numerous copyrights covering forks and spoons, for example. The law refers
As we all know we are experiencing the worst economic times since the great depression. The unemployment rate is the highest in many years. It is important to understand that unemployment figures are a lagging indicator of a weak economy. The reason is simple. When companies experience weak sales they cut back on manufacturing orders
Unfair competition is a commercial tort or civil wrong, however the tort of unfair competition is difficult to define. In our system of law we set limits on a minimum level of “fairness” in competition. In other words, it is illegal to compete “too hard”. The courts have had little success in defining unfair competition
