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It is vital for any business owner to know the answer to this question: “What is a trade secret?” Sometimes, a company’s intellectual property assets are valuable precisely because information about those assets is not generally known to the public. These are considered “trade secrets,” and both California and federal law afford businesses with legal protections for their trade secrets. These laws recognize that when a company loses its proprietary information due to theft or infringement, the results can be disastrous.

Trade secrets and other intellectual property can be extremely valuable to companies, particularly when those companies have competitors with similar products or services. That’s a major reason why companies will go to great lengths to ensure that their trade secrets and other IP assets remain confidential.

Trade secrets protect the things that make a business unique, and trade secrets themselves are protected by both federal and state laws. California trade secret lawyers are often asked, “What is the Defend Trade Secrets Act?” The Defend Trade Secrets Act is a federal law that applies to any trade secrets related to products or services used in interstate commerce. The statute also applies to trade secrets used internationally.

Trademark protection is extremely important because it ensures that a company’s brand doesn’t get tarnished by misuse, and that customers don’t get outright stolen by a competitor due to unauthorized use. While common law trademark rights afford a certain level of protection since ownership of a mark is established the moment that mark is used, the best way to ensure that your trademark is truly protected in both the short term and the long term is to register it with the U.S.

It isn’t technically necessary to register a trademark in order to get trademark protection because common law trademark rights exist as soon as you create and use a trademarkable feature of your brand. However, many companies still decide to register their trademarks with the U.S.

There are three main symbols to indicate trademark rights: TM, SM, and ®. These symbols often appear as subscript or superscript in a product or service’s marketing materials. If you use one of these symbols, it will indicate that you are claiming trademark ownership.

If you are a business owner, you may know about the various options you have for protecting your intellectual property rights, such as trademark, copyright, and patent rights. Depending on the nature of your business, another IP right that you might possess is trade dress. What is trade dress? In the broadest terms, trade dress refers to the visual appearance of a product or service, or its packaging, that lets consumers know the product’s source.

A trademark is supposed to provide protection against infringement by a company that misleadingly uses another company’s slogan, logo, or design to confuse consumers about a product’s origin. But it is sometimes the case that a trademark infringement claim is brought in bad faith by a plaintiff who either misunderstands the law or who is trying to make a quick buck.

“Intellectual property” covers a wide range of business assets, such as books, screenplays, photos, movies, computer software code, inventions, and formulas. Copyrights, trademarks, and patents are the main types of intellectual property. Federal law provides strong protections for the creators of original works, inventors, and licensors of IP rights, but the law is complex.