Entertainment Intellectual Property Lawyers in California Protecting Your Business’ Most Important Asset: Intellectual Property
As a producer, musician, screenplay writer, or another creative professional in the entertainment industry, you have something in your possession, an idea, a talent, or a skill, that other people or companies can use for financial gain or bolster their careers or businesses forward.
Your assets, which might include original song recordings, TV scripts, unpublished manuscripts, and other creative endeavors, are your most important business assets. As not to overlook this, business ideas aren’t off-limits either. A sketch on a napkin or an idea for a movie can get into the wrong hands, and without a legal contract in place, you may not have any legal or financial rights to your original idea if it takes off.
Now more than ever, it’s easier for intellectual property (IP) to be stolen, especially in the digital age. Ideas and information are everywhere for the taking, from websites to social media to other digital platforms. And the legal lines are blurry.
With the help of an entertainment intellectual property lawyer, however, you can protect yourself in the early stages of the creative process when idea theft is most prominent or as a more mature entertainment business looking for long-term protection as you grow and expand your brand.
What is Intellectual Property?
Intellectual property (IP) is a set of intangible assets by original creators, companies, and owners of inventions such as artistic works, creative expressions, ideas, designs, and inventions.
And in the entertainment industry, intellectual property is their primary product. Or, in other words, their bread and butter.
The original owners have exclusive rights to these creations for use in their entertainment business, which happens through trademarks, copyrights, patents, trade dress, and trade secrets. These assets are legally protected by law from outside use and outside parties’ financial gain without consent or approval.
Intellectual property is meant to protect the different types of work creatives produce.
As a real-life example of the benefit of intellectual property rights, copyright.gov indicates that a copyright protection can last for the life of an author-plus an additional 70 years. Terms of copyright, trademarks, and other IP depend on several factors, though the public record of ownership offers long-term security, protects your image, mitigates future financial losses due to theft; and puts you in a position to build off that innovation with other partners and companies that will pay to use it.
Understanding intellectual property is the first step in knowing how best to protect it. And knowing the ins and outs of intellectual property law is just one way Pacitti Law Firm can help protect you from infringement and theft and enforce your rights.
What are the Different Types of Intellectual Property?
When you have IP in place, you can determine how your work, name, and brand are used by who, when, and how often. This also means that any person or company that abuses your intellectual property without consent or approval will be subject to a lawsuit and potential ramifications.
Intellectual property theft is taken so seriously and has become such a growing threat that IP prevention is a priority of the FBI’s criminal investigative program. According to fbi.gov, they are focusing on theft, trade secrets, and infringement on certain products that impact consumers and cost businesses billions of dollars a year.
You are doing your part by investing in an intellectual property attorney to help you protect your business. These are examples, taken from uspto.gov, of intellectual property types and how they might fit with your business:
- Patent: Patents protect new and useful processes, machines, articles of manufacture, or composition of matter and/or any new and useful improvement. Patents typically last 20 years from the date of inception.
- Trademarks: A trademark is a word, phrase, symbol or design, or combination, that distinguishes the source of the goods or services of one party from those of others. A trademark is in effect for the duration it’s used.
- Copyright: Copyrights, as we’ve lightly explored above, protect original works of authorship from the time the works are created. The copyright term is the life of the author, plus 70 years after death.
- Trade secrets: These are often found in businesses and are protected in the United States as long as the information is a secret, has commercial value, and reasonable steps are taken to protect the information.
How Does an Intellectual Property Lawyer Help Me?
IP attorneys, when it comes to intellectual property and entertainment, help clients in a number of ways. They have experience in patent law, trademark law, copyright law, trade secret law, licensing, and unfair competition.
The demand for IP lawyers happens to be growing, in fact, given there are always more creative ideas to protect, and issues with the digital space are causing strife for creators as theft and use without consent, among other things, run rampant.
Pacitti Law Firm counsels clients on a number of business and IP-related matters in connection with representation in entertainment law matters, as well as matters limited exclusively to IP representation, such as trademark protection with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) or copyright registration with the United States Copyright Office.
Other, more tangible examples could include:
- Helping you file for and prepare documents for patents and trademarks, and other IP types as your business demands
- Drafting licensing agreements
- Working in tandem with patent and trademark offices in the United States and around the world to obtain them
- Understanding your IP rights and managing your IP
- Litigating IP issues when your rights are infringed upon
- Franchising and distribution issues
- Technology transfers and trade secret projects
Book a Free Call with our Entertainment Lawyers
As your IP rights are at stake, we may perform multiple duties, using our knowledge in the entertainment space to help you set up, manage, and safeguard your IP from infringement.
What’s more, should you need a team of IP litigators to enforce your intellectual property rights when they have been breached, Pacitti Law Firm will be there.
Perhaps you’re starting your new venture, and you want to protect your IP, or you believe your IP rights have been infringed upon. In any case, we urge you to book a free, complimentary consultation with our team of entertainment and IP lawyers.
At the conclusion of our consultation and initial discussion, all clients are provided a comprehensive assessment of their legal needs, the time involved to provide the proposed services, and the projected costs. We’re transparent upfront as the attorney-client relationship is important to us.
At Pacitti Law Firm, collectively, we have more than 20 years of firsthand insight and knowledge in the entertainment space with a deep understanding of IP matters and the issues that arise. Call us today: 323-230-6200 and speak to an attorney right away.