Protecting Your Trademarks: Understanding the Basics

John M. Conley and J. Dickson Phillips, III presented "Protecting Your Trademarks: Understanding the Basics" on Tuesday, September 11 at Robinson Bradshaw's Research Triangle office.

Program topics included:

What is a trademark? How can you protect your marks from infringement? Can you reserve a trademark like you can a domain name? What is the difference between a trademark and a trade name? These are some of the basic questions about trademarks we find our clients often need us to answer. In this lunchtime seminar, we will answer these and other questions to give you a working understanding of how to create and protect your marks. 

Topics addressed included:

• How does one acquire rights to a mark?
• Does a mark need to be registered?
• What are the costs and benefits of registration?
• What constitutes trademark infringement?
• How you avoid infringement of others' marks?
• What are the remedies for trademark infringement?
• Is your domain name a trademark?
• What if someone uses a domain name similar to your trade name or trademark?
• What if your competitor puts your mark in the meta tags of its website?

1.0 CLE credit hour was approved by the North Carolina State Bar.

Related Materials:

• Trademark_seminar_PPT.pdf