Patents, trademarks, trade secrets, copyright, trade dress—physical products can need all of them. Here’s what each covers and the order that actually makes sense.
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Trade secrets protect customer lists, pricing, and processes, but only if you can prove you tried to keep them secret. Here’s what actually counts, and what doesn’t.
If a competitor is selling a knockoff of your product on Amazon with your exact packaging and a different brand name slapped on it, the patent you need is probably not the one you’re thinking of. A design patent protects how something looks. The shape of a bottle. The layout of a label. The distinctive visual identity of a product or its packaging. If your product has a look that customers recognize, a design patent may cover it.
Different AI design tools have wildly different rules about trademark registration. Canva explicitly prohibits it. Midjourney has a revenue threshold. Adobe Firefly offers IP indemnification. Here’s what to know before you file.
You’ve spent years building an audience under your handle, but here’s the thing nobody tells you: that handle is not a trademark. It’s a license from the platform. And if someone else files a federal trademark registration for your brand name, they can file a complaint and get your handle transferred to them. I break down exactly how this happens, what platform complaint processes actually do (and don’t do), when being in a different industry protects you and when it doesn’t, and the three questions that tell you whether your brand name is genuinely protected right now.
Today is the part that I think is even more urgent for a lot of people, because it covers something your estate attorney may have never thought about, and your IP attorney may not have either: the digital infrastructure of your business. Your social media accounts. Your website and domain names. Your email list. Your online store. Your digital products. Your podcast. The platforms where your revenue actually comes from.
None of that is in the traditional estate planning conversation. And the legal framework around it is genuinely strange: a mix of platform terms of service, federal computer access law, state property law, and a lot of gaps where nobody has figured out the right answer yet.
An operating agreement is a legal contract that governs how your LLC is run. It is the rulebook for your business. It covers things like who owns what percentage, how decisions get made, how profits and losses are distributed, what happens when someone wants to leave, whether you can force someone out and when, what happens if someone dies or is incapacitated, how you bring in new members, and what happens if the business closes.
Your intellectual property is property. Legally, practically, economically, it is an asset, just like your house, your investment accounts, and your business equipment. And like all property, when you die, it has to go somewhere. The difference is in how it works and what it needs to survive.
Taylor Swift just filed to register her voice as a trademark. Here’s what that means for creators, and the 8 brand deal contract clauses you need to read before you sign anything. The difference between a reasonable contract and a rights-stripping one often comes down to a handful of clauses that most creators have never had explained to them.
What’s trade dress? If you’re a guitar person, you know which brand is associated with a slanted headstock. If you enjoy vodka, you know which brand is sold in a skull-shaped bottle. If I describe a shoe with a distinctive red lacquered sole that contrasts with the rest of the shoe, you know exactly what brand I’m talking about. How about a tall, narrow drink can with large blue and white rectangles and some red text? Or a fast-food kids’ meal container with two arches on the top?
I didn’t say any of those names. No logo. Just a description of how something looks, and you knew. That’s the power of a trade dress trademark.
Last November, the Johnny Cash estate sued Coca-Cola for using a tribute singer specifically chosen to sound like the Man in Black, without permission, without a license, without paying a single cent. Sound familiar? It should. Frito-Lay tried the exact same thing with Tom Waits in 1992 and lost two and a half million dollars. Brands have been stealing artists’ voices, content, and identities for decades. And it’s not just celebrities at risk. If you’re a creator signing brand deals, or a business hiring influencers, your contracts may be doing the same thing right now without you realizing it. I’m Julie King, a patent and IP attorney with over 25 years of experience, and today we’re talking about the three legal traps hiding in almost every influencer and marketing contract.
Here is the AI and privacy issue that is not getting enough attention: AI meeting transcription tools.
Also, there is a federal court decision from earlier this year that has been generating a lot of conversation in legal circles, and a lot of confusion. If you have seen headlines like “court rules AI chats are not privileged” or “your AI conversations can be used against you,” here is the accurate version of what actually happened and what it means for you.
What about your attorney using AI? Here’s what you need to know.