Articles Posted in Business Formation & Planning

When you have a great new idea for your business, you should take the steps to protect it from theft. There are too many competitors who would leap at the opportunity to snatch a great idea from another inventor. Inventors must take the initiative to safeguard their intellectual property.

Figuring out how to adequately protect your intellectual property can be a daunting process. The best place to start is to understand the three major types of intellectual property protection. Read on to learn whether these forms of legal protection may be right for your invention.

1. Patents

Many people will attempt to form startups, but only a few will succeed. When it comes to business formation, there is sometimes an intangible factor that can contribute to success or failure: Entrepreneurship. Sometimes the risk factors that come with forming a startup can be mitigated only by a great entrepreneur.

The founder of a startup must act not only as the business owner, but as an innovator. Not everyone can have this talent. So how can you tell whether you have what it takes? Read on to see whether entrepreneurship is right for you.

You’re a self-starter

In a five-minute video appeal posted February 21 and available for viewing at https://vimeo.com/204940925/ce417a2098, Nashville music producer T Bone Burnett recently urged the U. S. Copyright Office to close safe harbor loopholes in Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Current provisions in the DCMA require that music creators identify and request removal of pirated material from internet search engines and video services. A multitude of prominent artists including Sir Paul McCartney, Lionel Richie, Taylor Swift and Steven Tyler have previously called for copyright reform. The U.S. House Judiciary Committee will consider more stringent copyright legislation later this year.

Introduction

A current dispute in copyright law for which public policy does not offer a simple solution is: who should be responsible for finding copyright infringing material on the Internet and enforcing the DMCA takedown provisions? This question is one of incentives, deterrence, and safe harbors as the DMCA has been written by Congress and interpreted by courts. The Copyright Office was recently accepting public comments on Section 512 of the Copyright Act which is likely what spurred T Bone’s recent remarks. T Bone’s remarks show that many individuals such as musicians and other creators of copyrightable content are not satisfied with the current system. T Bone wants changes in the statute to put more of the onus on internet service providers such as Google, YouTube, Facebook, and other providers of online user uploaded content. He believes that the current system of internet service monopolies acting within the safe harbor of the DMCA allows companies like Google to pay artificially low royalty fees to artists. The current system incentivizes copyright owners to patrol the Internet in a perpetual game of whack-a-mole to find infringing works, then notify the internet service of the infringing content through a takedown notice.