Archive for January 11th, 2009
Days Off
Sunday, January 11th, 2009
This post contains scheduled days when I am not available for personal reasons (vacation, family time, etc.). It will be updated as appropriate.
Meetings
Sunday, January 11th, 2009
This post shows the meetings that I am scheduled to attend. I will be out of the office and unavailable by phone or email during these times. This page will be updated as appropriate.
Seminars and Speeches
Sunday, January 11th, 2009
This post contains the times for seminars and speeches that I am scheduled to give in 2009. It will be updated as appropriate.
New Year, New Blog Site
Sunday, January 11th, 2009
Welcome to Delain Law Office’s new blog site!
You can still get to the former ipattorneyfirm blog site. That site is, however, inactive from here on out; new content will appear here rather than there.
If you get to the former ipattorneyfirm’s blog site from a link on the website, please email me with the URL of the page that referred you to the old site. Thanks.
Nancy
Tags: General
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off
IP Audit a Necessity for Due Diligence
Sunday, January 11th, 2009
What IS an IP audit, anyway?
An IP audit is a systematic categorization of all of your business’s intellectual property, including but not limited to:
- Inventions (patented and unpatented)
- Copyrights (registered and unregistered)
- Trademarks (registered and unregistered)
- Trade Dress (registered and unregistered)
- Trade Secrets (obviously unregistered)
This categorization, with a simultaneous search for areas where your IP may have “holes,” is done by an intellectual property attorney in cooperation with your firm’s management team; despite the word “audit,” this is NOT an accounting function (although certainly an accountant belongs on your firm’s management team and probably on the IP audit team).
Use an IP audit as due diligence when you plan to merge, divest, buy, sell, create, license, franchise your property. Also use an IP audit when there has been a shift in the law that governs IP.
For more information about IP audits, read Nancy’s article, published in the December 2003 issue of Les Nouvelles (the flagship publication of the Licensing Executives’ Society), The Intellectual Property Audit (.pdf format) or visit our IP Audit webpage.
Tags: business-law, intellectual-property
Posted in Contracts, Copyright, Franchising, General Business Law, Licensing, Patent, Trade Dress, Trade Secret, Trademark/Service Mark, Universal IP | No Comments »