In law school people get pretty testy when you get a A and they don’t. They may try and steal papers off your computer or make a photocopy of YOUR moot speech and then deliver it as their own, or copy your presentation word for word and then give it as their own in another class. When confronted, these losers have NO SHAME; they fully admit that they cheated their way through college and intend to keep cheating all the way through life… and if YOU have a problem with it, “YOU are NOT A TEAM PLAYER” whiny snot-ape voice “my ANXIETY!!” If you have ANYTHING good in your life, everybody else wants to steal it.

This is an American perspective.

Think of it like renting a space in a strip mall. Let’s say you go to the strip mall, and there is an empty store space. No one is using it. From the looks of things - no one has ever used. It’s just sitting there. You reach out to whoever has authority to rent the space and ask. You get it quickly - no problem. This is common in a design patent license for something that was never built. You can pretty much just ask for it and get the license.

Now lets say, that there is a space, but it’s occupied. You want to use it, but just for a moment and when no one else is using it for some reason. This is akin to a copyright license. Sometimes the rightsholder says yes, sometimes no, but generally, you can get an answer.

Next, let’s say you want to kick out the existing tenant and then take the space over. This is not fun or easy. This is equivalent to trying to get IP licensed that is currently being used by the rightsholder. You can ask… but expect a no or radio silence.

Finally, let’s say that instead of renting the space, you want to burn it to the ground. This is somewhat like infringing and then asserting a defense that the intellectual property is invalid. As you can imagine, the occupant would rather not be burned to the ground and you will have quite an event to resolve the situation. You will need to initiate a law suit or an administrative proceeding.

I know what it means for two people to come together to create something, but I won’t go into details as that is NSFW.

I don’t know what it means to have “created a patent with someone” so I’ll instead answer this question:

“If you were a joint inventor on an issued patent, is it possible for the other joint inventors to license or sell it without your knowledge?”

I will assume that (1) this is in the U.S., (2) the inventors were the applicants, and (3) there were no assignments. That means that each of the joint inventors are joint owners of the patent.

35 U.S.C. 262 deals with joint owners and the key phrase there is “each of the joint owners of a patent may make, use, offer to sell, or sell the patented invention within the United States, or import the patented invention into the United States, without the consent of and without accounting to the other owners.” That’s what the statute says. Caselaw embellishes on that by holding that those rights of joint owners include the rights to license others to do those acts.

“Without accounting” means different things, but here you can assume it to mean “you can collect some money and you don’t have to share the money with me.”

So, yes, in that situation, one joint owner can license the patent, collect royalties or other benefits, and each joint owner can do this separately.

This leads to amusing situations. Many years ago, there was patent litigation and we noted that there were four inventors, only three of whom were employees of the company suing on the patent and they had an obligation to assign and did so. Notice that 3 < 4. Our firm checked out the details, made sure it was actually the case, located the fourth inventor, visited that person with a check for something like $10K or $20K and asked if they wanted it in exchange for a license. Deal. We returned to court to ask the case be dismissed as our client could no longer be considered a patent infringer, because they were licensed under the patent.

While I haven’t seen this happen, theoretically, a licensee could offer $50K to one joint inventor for a license, then go to another joint inventor and offer $25K and due to a variant of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, neither joint inventor gets anything. I use that as a cautionary tale with clients to ensure that one entity controls the patent prosecution process and owns all the rights.

On the licensee side, it would be foolish to have a purchase agreement with less than all of the owners of a patent. I have seen this, but it was done with fraud and they got away with it a few times until a sharp-eyed licensing attorney thought “Hey, let me look up the full list of owners to see if all of them are on the same page here.”

Intellectual property (IP) refers to legal rights that are granted to individuals or entities for their creations or inventions. It provides exclusive rights over intangible assets that are the result of human creativity and innovation. Intellectual property rights allow creators and inventors to protect and control their creations, ensuring that they can benefit from their work and prevent others from using or exploiting it without permission. The main types of intellectual property include:

1. Copyright: Copyright protects original works of authorship, such as literary works, music, art, films, software, and architectural designs. It grants the creator exclusive rights to reproduce, distribute, display, perform, and create derivative works based on their original creation. Copyright protection is automatic upon creation and does not require registration in many jurisdictions.
2. Trademark: Trademarks protect distinctive signs, logos, symbols, names, phrases, or designs used to distinguish goods or services in the marketplace. They enable consumers to identify and differentiate products or services of one business from those of others. Trademark registration provides exclusive rights to use the mark and allows legal action against unauthorized use or infringement.
3. Patent: Patents protect inventions and provide exclusive rights to inventors for a limited period. A patent grants the inventor the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, or importing the patented invention. Patents are typically granted for new and useful processes, machines, compositions of matter, or improvements thereof, and require a detailed application process and examination by a patent office.
4. Trade Secret: Trade secrets are confidential and valuable information that provides a competitive advantage to a business. Examples include formulas, manufacturing processes, customer lists, and marketing strategies. Unlike patents, trade secrets are protected by keeping them confidential and implementing measures to maintain their secrecy.
5. Industrial Design: Industrial design protection covers the aesthetic aspects and visual features of a product or object. It relates to the unique design, shape, pattern, or ornamentation of an object that affects its visual appearance. Industrial design rights safeguard the visual appearance and prevent unauthorized copying or imitation of the design.
6. Geographical Indication: Geographical indications (GIs) protect products associated with a specific geographic origin and possess qualities or a reputation attributable to that origin. GIs can include agricultural products, foodstuffs, wines, handicrafts, and industrial products. They help prevent misappropriation and ensure that only products from a specific geographic region can use the protected indication.

You asked “Can an artist claim copyright infringement if they give their design to the customer to use as they please, but the customer turns around and uses it for profit without permission or credit?”

The correct answer to this is that it depends on the contract between the artist and customer.

In a commercial art setting, there are three typical scenarios:

1. A work for hire situation where the artist is an employee and creates the work as part of their job duties. In this case, the copyright on the resulting work belongs to the employer (not the artist), even if there is no other written agreement. it is also possible to write a work for hire agreement even if there is otherwise no employee-employer relationship between the artist and customer. In this case, the artist cannot claim copyright infringement, because they do hot hold the copyright on the work — their employer or customer does.
2. A sale agreement situation where the artist and customer have a written agreement that states what the customer is purchasing. The customer could be buying just this copy of the work, could be buying multiple rights (for example, first publication rights), or all rights. In a sale situation, the artwork and some rights actually change ownership. The artist may claim copyright infringement if the customer uses the work in ways that are not explicitly permitted in the sale agreement.
3. A license agreement situation, which is similar to #2 above — the difference is that the artist continues to retain all rights to the work, and is giving the customer permission to use the work in specific ways in exchange for money or other consideration. As in the sale situation, the license agreement specifically says what the customer can and cannot do. Again, if the customer violates the license agreement, the artist can claim copyright infringement.

In the absence of a specific agreement, the customer is purchasing a specific copy (or copies) of the work, and is not authorized to make more copies — the artist holds the copyright, and can claim infringement if the customer makes additional copies of the work. This can get confusing, but in general:

• Under the first sale doctrine, once a copy of the work is sold, the artist cannot control what happens to that specific copy. For example, the customer could purchase the artist’s original oil painting and decide to burn it in a public spectacle; the artist can of course object to this, but has no copyright claim to prevent it. Similarly, the customer could purchase 100 art prints for $1 each, use them to create 10 collages, and sell the collages for $1,000 each; the artist who created the art prints still doesn’t have a copyright claim.
• Copyright generally prevents any reproduction of the work, so any time the customer attempts to make a copy of the work, the artist can raise a copyright claim. In the collage example:
• The customer cannot create additional prints of their collages, since that would also create unauthorized copies of portions of the original art prints. The original artist can raise a copyright claim (and the customer may or may not succeed with a fair use defense).
• If the customer purchases a single art print for $1, they cannot copy it 100 times in order to create their 10 collages. The original artist holds the copyright for the work, and is the only person who can authorize additional copies.

In most cases, yes, the copyright holder could refuse to allow your proposed use at any price.

There are exceptions. For example, if you meet the guidelines to qualify as fair use of the copyrighted material, you would not need permission. However, especially if you think the copyright holder might be upset and sue, best to consult a lawyer before relying on this--fair use law is very complex.

Similarly, some copyright holders may offer licenses at a specific rate to anyone who wants one (see iLicenseMusic for an example of such), or may offer it under a license such as Creative Commons that allows for reuse under certain conditions.

Also, there are situations where a compulsory license applies. These do not, however, apply to any of the scenarios you put forth. But if it does apply in a given case, anyone who pays the statutory license fee and fulfills its terms cannot be forbidden a use license.

These tend to be exceptions. The rule largely is, if the copyright holder is unwilling to license to you and you can't convince them otherwise, tough luck.

In most cases the entity who are not the inventors on the patent are the ones that receive royalties, licenses, or making the lawsuits to enforce the patents. If you are wondering how can this be, then you need to realize that most patents are applied for and filed on behalf of corporations who are the assignees of the patent. This makes them the owner of the patent, not the inventors.

In today’s world, we’ve already had solo inventors like Alexander Graham Bell’s who were making inventions on their own, where these inventions then were used to create companies. Now companies have their groups of engineers and scientists work on various projects for a fixed salary. In exchange, the company owns the result of those projects including any patents that are applied for and approved. They may give the inventors an award with a bonus, but the company will be the owners of the patent. These companies can include universities where their professors and researchers are funded using research grants, as well as companies that may form from small inventors pooling their resources together to create patents where they are sometimes labeled “patent trolls” as they don’t actually practice the things they patent.

The big thing to realize is getting a useful patent takes money and resources. While inventors are great at inventing, they rarely have the legal expertise needed to get and enforce the patent. Companies have those resources including entire departments of potential inventors. So they are able to apply for way more patents than solo inventors.

Copyright no longer requires registration in any country, although in the US one must register before starting a copyright infringement lawsuit. US copyright Registration currently costs $45 for a single author filing online. The form takes about an hour, and no lawyer is needed. For other situations, see

In many countries there is no trademark protection without registration. In the US a trademark has some protection just from being used, without any registration, but additional protections come with registration. US trademark registration can easily cost $1,000 or more, and take several months to a year. A trademark lawyer is often needed. Trademark protection in one country does not usually protect in another.

Patent protection only exists when a patent application has been field and approved by the proper government office. A patent lawyer or practitioner is usually needed. The relevant office varies by country. A patent may need to be field separately in multiple countries for international protection.

Asked: “Is it possible to use intellectual property rights such as copyright, trademark, or patent without registering them with an authority?”

The following is based on US law, other countries may be different, or not.

People do it all the time. Two examples:

When an artist sells a painting,they are not only selling the physical piece of artwork, they are licensing certain rights to the buyer, such as the right to exhibit the painting in public... but without an assignment of copyright, the artist retains the right to control the production of copies of the work. Think about artists selling
reproductions of an original oil painting they've already sold.

People sign employment contracts that require them to assign inventions to their employer.

People buy and sell real property ... such as real estate... without an attorney, also. That doesn't mean that it is necessarily the wisest thing to do. Especially if you haven't done something like that a few times before … and more especially if it is a valuable piece of property. The same holds true for intellectual property.

�m�X�S�5

As has been answered, yes you can. However, the question you should be asking is "Should I license or sell my IP without an attorney?" And the answer to that is, no, you should NOT!! Why? It's very complicated and you'll likely mess it up in favor of the person/company you're selling or licensing to. It happens more often than it should, and you can't fix it, it's contractual and binding!!

There are a lot of things you must think about, not to mention the negotiation itself. Many IP attorneys know how to negotiate on your behalf to get you the best deal, then put that information clearly and concisely into the contract!!

Good luck!!

Disclaimer:

This answer is not a substitute for professional legal advice. This answer does not create an attorney-client relationship, nor is it a solicitation to offer legal advice. If you ignore this warning and convey confidential information in a private message or comment, there is no duty to keep that information confidential or forego representation adverse to your interests. Seek the advice of a licensed attorney in the appropriate jurisdiction before taking any action that may affect your rights. Quora users who provide responses to legal questions are intended third party beneficiaries with certain rights under Quora's Terms of Service (http://www.quora.com/about/tos).

Yes, you may be able to challenge the trademark registration, but the success of your challenge will depend on several factors. Here’s a breakdown of how you might approach this situation:

1. The Relationship Between the Parties

It sounds like you had some kind of contractual relationship with the individual who registered the trademark. The fact that the contract was voided due to non-payment is relevant because:

• If the contract gave the other party rights to your design work but was later voided, they might have lost any claim to use or register your intellectual property.
• Conversely, if the design was created while the contract was in effect, even if payment wasn’t made, the legal ownership of the design could depend on the terms of the original agreement and whether it was fully rescinded.

2. Grounds to Challenge the Trademark Registration

To challenge the registration, you’ll need to argue that it violates one or more principles of trademark law. Here are a few potential grounds:

• Fraud: If the registrant falsely claimed to be the original creator or rightful owner of the design in their trademark application, you can argue the registration was obtained fraudulently.
• Bad Faith: If the individual knowingly used your design without your permission to register the trademark, this could constitute bad faith. Courts and trademark offices generally frown upon such behavior.
• Ownership Rights: In most jurisdictions, the person who created the design is considered the owner unless they explicitly transferred ownership. If you never transferred ownership (e.g., through a contract or agreement), you might still hold rights to the design.
• Likelihood of Confusion: If you’re using your design in commerce and their registration creates confusion about the source of goods or services, you can argue that their trademark harms your brand and business.

3. Timing: Filing an Opposition or Cancellation

Your ability to challenge the trademark depends on the stage of the process:

• Opposition: If the trademark has been filed but not yet registered, you can file an opposition during the opposition period (often 30 days after publication in the trademark registry). This is your chance to stop the registration before it’s finalized.
• Cancellation: If the trademark has already been registered, you can file a petition to cancel it. Cancellation is typically based on the same grounds (fraud, bad faith, prior rights, etc.).

4. Evidence You’ll Need

To strengthen your challenge, you’ll need to present evidence. This could include:

• Proof of Creation: Documentation that you designed the intellectual property, such as drafts, timestamps, emails, or contracts.
• Void Contract: Evidence that the contract was voided due to non-payment, potentially showing that the other party had no rights to the design.
• Misuse of Your Work: Demonstrate that the individual used your design without your permission to register the trademark.

Is it possible to assign a patent to an LLC while still allowing original co-inventors to maintain IP rights excluding the right to sell or license

1. If the co-inventors don’t want to give up the right to exclude others from using the IP, it sounds more like a situation in which the co-inventors want to grant the LLC a non-exclusive license to practice under their patent, rather than an assignment of their ownership rights.
2. The key question is whether the co-inventors want to reserve the right to grant further licenses to the patent as they wish. If so, this would contradict the idea of an assignment and weigh in favor of a non-exclusive license to the LLC.
3. Another question is who will enforce the patent against infringers? If the co-inventors plan to retain ownership rights and grant licenses, then they would likely also take responsibility for enforcing the patent against infringers. In other words, the inventors will hire the lawyers that send cease and desist letters, initiate, prosecute and settle litigation with infringers, etc.
4. On the other hand, if the goal is for the LLC to take over management of the patent and licensing activities while enabling the inventors to continue research and development, then the assignment of ownership of the patent to the LLC that transfers with it all rights in the patent can be made subject to the LLC executing a license back to the original inventors granting to the inventors the rights that they need, presumably to practice the technology of the patent in conducting further research activities, etc.
1. Other rights could also be granted, of course, as the parties needs and plans dictate, (e.g., manufacturing, sales of units to the public, etc.), however these activities likely would be conducted by the LLC by agreed choice of all parties since that is a limited liability entity.
2. It is possible to sign both an assignment and a license back together during one closing.
5. Please be careful - this is a highly complicated area of the patent laws - seek the counsel of a lawyer with substantial experience in tech transactions.

I hope this addresses your question. If you have further questions, please feel free to post.

Best of luck with your venture!

ETA: Revised to reflect discussion in the comments.

Disclaimer:

Disclaimer: This is not legal advice and is provided for purposes of discussion only. We have never met and I may or may not be admitted to practice in your state; therefore I cannot serve as your attorney. For legal advice applicable to your specific situation, please contact a licensed attorney qualified to give legal advice in this subject area.

To add to the other responses, make sure that the license you’d obtain from the major company allows you to keep your derivative IP, i.e., the improvements you make on the licensed IP. Some license agreements include clauses that allows the licensor to obtain rights to any derivative IP resulting from the use of licensed IP, so be careful about that.

One approach might be to go ahead and file for patent protection on your improvement idea, making sure to clearly delineate where your idea differs from the IP to be licensed. THEN go discuss the license. Make sure that the license includes terms that does NOT allow the licensor to access the licensee’s existing IP.

An experienced IP professional should be able to help you navigate through these issues.

Good luck.

Intellectual properties (IPRs) are the intangible assets, i.e. the creation of the mind / intellect which need to be protected because they can be enjoyed by any person whoever has acquired that knowledge. Once is public domain, anyone can use it freely.

The governments have devised legal mechanisms to protect these IPRs to monopolize and to restrict the others from making, using or, selling of the products / processes. The monopoly encourages the innovators to divulge about the innovation, which in turn boosts the trade and benefits the society through accelerated innovation. Hence, the IPRs offer higher values because they present competitive edge and might contribute to the increased revenue generation of the companies / businesses.

Some of the IPR protection well-known are:

1. Patents – Protects the Scientific or technical inventions for a period of 20 years. This right prevents others from making, using or selling the invention without the consent of the owner of the invention
2. Trademarks – Protects the brand / trade names, logos, slogans, and other devices that are used to identify and distinguish products and services.
3. Copyrights – Mainly relate to literary, dramatic and artistic works. Prohibits others from copying the works of the original authors without the latter’s consent.
4. Geographical indications – Protects the products that have a specific geographical origin. Offers competitive edge due to the acquired qualities or a reputation primarily due to that origin.
5. Trade secrets – protects the composition / process / practice that is not known outside of the company and is maintained as a complete secret. Does not follow registration processes, hence a weaker form of protection.

A creator of intelectual property does not have to licence its intelectual property out to anyone to be the owner of the intelectual property rights they have created

A company does not create right it’s people do

To be the owner of the intelectual property rights the company needs to have either an employment agreement or a supplier contract that assigns the rights created by he employee / contractor during the course of their employment / contract over to the company

Certain types of intelectual property need to be registered to be effectively enforced and to prevent someone else registering the same or similar intelectual property rights as being the same ( eg patents )

What acts are considered violations of the Intellectual property Code?

In the U.S:

Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:

(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;

(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;

(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;

(4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;

(5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and

(6) in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.

There’s more, but I don’t think you are interested in things like boat vessel hulls or integrated circuit masks.

JA - Juris Doctor, LL.M. Intellectual Property

No legal advice is intended.

Your question is worded as if you expect a simple “yes” or “no” answer. It is not that simple.

On the first page of every U.S. patent is a line that lists the inventors, and another line that states who the invention is assigned to. For your ego and to build your resume and personal value, it is nice to be an inventor. However, to extract value from a patent, the only thing that counts is who the patent is assigned to.

Employees almost always are required to assign their inventions to their employers. I put “almost” in that sentence because there is probably an exception somewhere, though I have never seen it.

To answer your question directly, yes, someone who is not the primary inventor on a patent can receive royalties of licensing fees if the patent is used… if the inventor is also the owner of the patent.

If a group of people is listed as inventors, and the inventors are the owners, and they owners license the patent to another party, how the money is divided is completely up to the owner/inventors.

[Disclaimer: this is not legal advice, I don't know the facts, consult an attorney, etc.]

Yes to license, no to sell (in the US), if two or more co-inventors on a patent continue as co-owner after the patent issues, then each has a right to freely give licenses (at least non-exclusive licenses), but can only assign his or her own interest. Now, let's suppose inventors A and B are equal co-owners to patent X, and A licenses to third party C, non-exclusively, for $1M, but doesn't inform B of the transaction and keeps the $1M, then C's license is valid, but A has converted $500K that belongs to B and owes B at least that much. (Note, C is also a chump because C did not inspect the patent with B's name on it and demand to deal with B as well as A, or not at all.)

Compare to A purports to sell patent X to C for $1M, with B's involvement, I suspect A will have only assigned A's own interest, so C will have at most bought only a 50% interest in the patent, and may have an action against A of some kind because of A's dishonest conduct.

For a scenario in which A purports to grant C an exclusive license, I don't know what would happen.

To avoid these scenarios, it is good practice to not hold patents jointly. To use A and B, they can assign the patent to an entity E. Entity E can be an LLC, corporation, trust, or whatever, and it can have a wide variety of governance rules (e.g. shareholders agreement) that A and B want to set up. A and B should hire an attorney knowledgeable about entities in their state to help with this.

It is important to understand the terminology — a decent intellectual property attorney can explain this after reviewing the specific facts and the needs and desires of the parties.

A patent is a legal right to exclude. Doing something covered by the patent without permission is infringement. That patent owner has the right to stop infringement.

A license granted is permission or a waiver of the right to be excluded. The party that owns the right to exclude can grant those licenses.

A party that has the right to grant licenses can transfer that right to grant licenses to someone else. For example, I have the right to exclude throughout the U.S. and I can grant to someone the right to hand out licenses east of the Rockies.

If the license I grant is exclusive, that means that not only do I grant permission, but I also agree to not give out any other licenses.

There are other rights that come with a patent, such as bragging rights, besides the right to exclude and the right to enjoy a license, but those two are big ones.

The way the question is worded, it seems that what is desired is that the original owners of a patent (the inventors are the original owners if no other applicant is specified, in the U.S.) would assign the patent to a company but retain “IP rights” in the patent. Assigning a patent usually involves transferring away the right to sell the patent, exclude others and obtain revenues due to infringement, and the right to grant licenses, so it is unclear what the retained “IP rights” entail. Maybe they entail a nonexclusive license to use under various terms.

The company would then own a patent with a “bite taken out” of it. Investors and others might later have to determine how big a bite was taken out. If it was “we sell you this patent and you get the right to exclude and the right to recover damages, but we keep a royalty-free right to grant whatever licenses we want without accounting to you,” then that is quite a big bite.

A competent intellectual property licensing attorney can work out how to make that bite the right size so that their client gets the arrangement they intended to make.

Sure, you can do that. Though in that case, you're essentially just making it "all rights reserved", since people will need to ask your permission anyway to see if you consider their project racist, pornographic, or the meaningless "otherwise distasteful". At that point, you may as well be clear and just list it as all rights reserved, with a note that you may be willing to allow uses you personally approve of. Otherwise you're just muddying up the situation.

Free licenses mean reusers can use the content for any purpose at all. If that's not what you want, a free license like CC-BY is not the one you're looking for.

Regardless, you cannot stop people from making use of the material in a way that would qualify as "fair use" or the equivalent in other jurisdictions, even if you do not like the purpose it is put toward.

The person does not even understand what copyright infringement means.
You can't copyright an idea (say, making a film about homeless people in San Francisco), only a particular representation of the idea. Otherwise, nobody would be able to do a love story any more :-)
Being arrested and sent to prison are also rather extreme punishments for unintentional copyright infringement.
So, it seems that your "advisor" had no clue what she was talking about.
There are cases where someone who encourages copyright infringement can be sued (for example, torrent sites), but providing a list of films to someone on a specific topic does not even come close.
IMDB has a large catalog of films and documentaries, so if you search for a specific topic you may be able to find examples.