Protection vs. Infringement: How to Safeguard Your Brand
You have poured countless hours, significant resources and late nights into building your business, from creating the right logo to refining a unique product proposition and earning a reputation that keeps customers coming back. But what happens if another company starts using a name that sounds too much like yours? Or worse, what if you accidentally use a name or slogan that belongs to someone else?
The legal side of running a business can feel overwhelming, but protecting your intellectual property is more than a legal formality. It is a practical step that helps build and maintain your reputation, strengthen customer trust and protect the brand you have worked hard to build.
What is Intellectual Property (IP)?
Intellectual property refers to legal rights that protect certain intangible business and creative assets that make your business unique, such as brand identifiers, original creative works, inventions and confidential business information.
Intellectual property generally falls into five main categories:
- Trademarks protect words, names, logos, slogans and other source identifiers that distinguish one company’s goods or services from another’s.
- Copyrights protect original works of authorship that are fixed in a tangible medium, such as writing, photographs, music, artwork, video and software code. They protect the expression of an idea, not the underlying idea, method or system itself.
- Trade dress protects the overall look and feel of product packaging, product design or even a business environment when that appearance identifies the source and is not primarily functional.
- Trade secrets protect confidential business information that derives value from not being generally known, if the owner takes reasonable steps to keep it secret.
- Patents protect qualifying inventions and grant exclusive rights to new inventions and processes.
Understanding IP Infringement
Protecting your own assets is important, but so is understanding how to avoid violating the rights of others. Depending on the type of intellectual property involved, unauthorized use may be described as infringement, dilution, unfair competition or misappropriation. Put simply, it means using protected intellectual property in a way the law does not permit.
IP infringement is not always intentional. Many business owners run into IP issues because they do not do enough research before launching a new product, service or marketing campaign.
Understanding how these issues arise in practice can help you avoid costly mistakes. Here are a few common situations where businesses can run into trouble.
- Using similar trademarks: Trademark infringement can happen when a business uses a name, logo or other brand feature that is confusingly similar to an existing trademark for related goods or services. The trademarks do not have to be identical – they only need to be similar enough that consumers could mistakenly believe the products or services come from the same source.
- Using copyrighted materials: It is easy to copy text, images or music found online, but ease of access does not mean the material is free to use. For example, using a photo from an online search on your business blog without a license may be copyright infringement. The same can be true if you copy a competitor’s website wording or use popular music in a promotional video without permission.
- Misusing trade secrets: Trade secret issues often arise when a current or former employee takes confidential information to a competing business or a business partner uses the information without permission. If someone takes a confidential client list, proprietary source code or a secret manufacturing process that the company has taken reasonable steps to protect, that may be trade secret misappropriation.
How McCarty Law Can Help Protect Your Brand
Protecting intellectual property takes proactive planning and clear legal guidance. At McCarty Law, we help businesses of all sizes protect their assets and navigate the complexities of IP law. Our team is ready to support you at every stage of your business.
- Trademark clearance and registration: Before you invest heavily in branding, we help you conduct thorough trademark clearance searches. We review existing marks to help you assess whether your chosen name or logo is available for use. If it is, we then handle the registration process.
- Copyright protection: We help authors, artists and business owners register their original works with the U.S. Copyright Office.
- Dispute resolution: If someone uses your intellectual property without permission, or if you are accused of violating someone else’s rights, we can help. We work to resolve disputes through negotiation and mediation whenever possible.
If you have questions about registering a trademark, protecting a new creative work or responding to an infringement claim, we are here to help. Contact us today to discuss your intellectual property needs.
Kristy A. Christensen
Kristy specializes in helping clients protect their brands and intellectual property, with a focus on trademarks and copyrights. She also advises financial institutions and businesses of every size on a variety of creditor law and construction law matters.