An idea for a new and useful product has been looming in your thoughts for quite some time. Perhaps you have doodled some drawings showing how the product works. Perhaps you have even built a working model. Better still, you have perfected your working model and have given thought as to how you are going to manufacture the product, market it, and...

So, you have some company secrets. What business doesn’t? You may have a confidential marketing strategy that your most aggressive competitor would covet, if only it knew that your strategy has been reduced to a private inter-office memo. Perhaps you have a closely veiled manufacturing method that an up-and-coming entrepreneur would salivate...

Entrepreneurs know that starting a new business or expanding an ongoing business into new areas is the stuff that dreams are made of. To keep those dreams alive, serious thought has to be given to protecting the business in all of the usual ways – a sales network is firmly in place, the lease is iron-clad, the business liability insurance is...

One of its most obvious, but often overlooked, assets that a business has is the very name that the business uses to hold itself out to the public. That name, including the names of various products and services it may market, are valuable assets of that business and need to be treated as such. Most business owners do not realize it, but the...

The general rule on this subject is that an employee who invents something as part of his or her job duties probably has a legal duty to assign his or her entire interest in the invention and any patent that may be obtained on that invention to his or her employer. If the employee invents something apart from his or her normal job duties, then...