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Why use a lawyer when you can buy a legal agreement?
November 21, 2011

In business, contracts and agreements are part of daily life. Consulting a lawyer to draft all your agreements can be expensive, so in practice, only bigger businesses have the resources to get legal advice every time they...

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Stay Vigilant: Limitation Periods and Copyright Infringement
November 1, 2011

Copyright offers crucial protection to individuals and businesses alike enabling them to own and exploit their creative works. This might include photographs, articles, software, website designs, films, music and a range of...

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Why Every Business Needs an Intellectual Property Strategy
October 17, 2011

Nowadays there is increasing awareness about the value of “intellectual property” and brands. Yet “intellectual property” is a term that alienates many people because they don’t understand what it...

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Software Licences and the US First Sale Doctrine – Psystar judgment handed down
October 4, 2011

Key to Apple’s surging popularity have been the ease of use of its products and software, and seamless integration between its devices and services.

Arguably unique in the personal computer industry, Apple exercises strict...

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How to Use Trade Marks to Protect your Brand

February 26, 2010

Shireen Smith describes why Trade Marks are important in helping to protect your brand and the best way to go about registering one.

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Why Web 2.0 Brand Protection Requires Online Brand Promotion

December 1, 2009

When I wrote the introduction to my proposed new book in early November Why Web 2.0 Brand Protection Requires Online Brand Promotion, I hoped to publish this chapter shortly afterwards.  Needless to say, life got in the...

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Software Patents and 1-Click Shopping
September 19, 2011

Websites, iPad apps, accounting systems, and the software running on your home wireless router are all the result of an often considerable investment of time, money, skill and effort. In return, their creators are typically...

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Georgia-Pacific and Kimberly-Clark: Quilted Designs and Functional Trade Marks
September 12, 2011

Intellectual property is the cornerstone of many modern businesses, and the law offers various mechanisms to safeguard know how, creativity, ingenuity and investment in reputation and marketing. A significant complexity when...

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Bayfiles – The Jolly Roger at Half Mast?
September 7, 2011

The Pirate Bay has been thrown into the limelight a number of times, not least following a legal battle over copyright infringement which resulted in jail sentences for the four site operators in April 2009 (though at the time...

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Pinterest and Copyright
March 29, 2012

Pinterest, a new social media site that allows users to ‘pin’ digital pictures on virtual pin boards, has recently faced a number of concerns regarding potential copyright infringement.

An American lawyer Kirsten...

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How to Handle Intellectual Property Rights
May 3, 2012

Some entrepreneurs regard Intellectual Property Rights as irrelevant to what they are aiming to achieve, while others are overly mindful of IP rights, even to the point of treating them as an end in themselves.

Acquiring rights that...

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Hargreaves: Why Internet and Social Media are Key Reasons SMEs Lack Access To The Right Type of Advice
May 16, 2012

The Hargreaves report, covered previously on this Azrights blog, looked at whether the current copyright regime is detrimental to innovation in the UK. As noted on the SOLO IP blog, the report also questioned whether...

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