Exploring The Nuances Of Immigration Law

Trademark and patent laws are critical to protecting your rights and interests in a variety of intellectual properties. Societal and technological shifts have led to a number of trends that may endanger those rights. It is important to keep up with the following six trends.

AI-Powered Infringement

An entire class of modern AI systems relies on datasets with billions of entries. However, these systems often scrape information directly from the internet with no regard for the rights of patent and trademark holders. The aggressiveness of the activity is so bad that many AIs even render rights holders' watermarks directly into generated images, such as a case involving Getty Images. A trademark attorney will encourage you to identify and attack such abuses to prevent parties from leveraging your IP for their profit.

International Markets

The globalization of seemingly everything has created challenges for defending patents and trademarks across the world. Increasingly, a patent attorney has to work to register ideas with authorities across the continents to prevent and punish violations.

Patent Trolling

Registering and then not using patents has become an entire business model. Law firms now exist that solely register patents without ever deploying them. The goal is to threaten anyone who makes anything with a lawsuit in the hope of making an easy buck with a settlement. You and a patent attorney may have to decide how defensible a patent troll's claim is and whether the expense of fighting them off is worth it.

Overly Broad Patents

A lot of trolling only happens because patent authorities largely approve low-quality applications and then leave the various parties to fight things out in court. Unfortunately, this encourages litigation. Even if a party isn't truly trolling, they might not bring anything of value to the innovation process. However, they might bring enough legal firepower to force you to hire a patent attorney of your own.

Digitally-Powered Counterfeiting

High-quality digital imagery has made counterfeiting easier than ever before. Increasingly, the giveaways on counterfeit products are more likely to quality-control problems in the production process rather than the accuracy of the trademarked logo or image.

Patent Thickets

Especially in research-heavy industries, many parties own the various patents needed to bring together one idea. This creates a thicket of patents. Your patent attorney may have to negotiate with double-digit parties to secure all of the rights needed to bring a product or process to market.

To learn more, contact a patent attorney in your area.