US Intellectual Property Law » trademark http://www.iplawintheus.com Copyrights, Trademarks, and Patents Mon, 28 Feb 2011 21:38:15 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1 US Patent http://www.iplawintheus.com/us-patent/ http://www.iplawintheus.com/us-patent/#comments Wed, 14 Jul 2010 17:25:02 +0000 Andrew http://www.iplawintheus.com/us-patent/ US Patent is a post from: US Intellectual Property Law

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Can be stated as an service that is granted by the government and the creator of such patent is conferred with the sole rights in regards with the usage, making and the selling of the invention. After a certain thing is invented the creator of this invention, needs to go through a procedure to get this patent on a technology or a product. There are various steps of getting a patent and numerous reasons for getting the same.

The process of getting a patent registered is not an easy process and the inventor needs to go through a long legal process. The US Patent can be categorized under three sections i.e. utility patents, design patents and plant patent. Plant Patent can be granted to any person who discovers or invents and replicates any different variety of plant, asexually.

The utility patents can be granted to any person who discovers or invents an innovative and helpful article of manufacture, process, composition of matter or machine etc. The design patents can be granted to any person who creates and innovative ornamental and original pattern for a product to be manufactured.

The US Patent office is an organization of the U.S Department of Commerce. The chief function of this organization is to permit patents for protecting the valuable inventions and to grant them with the trademarks. This procedure recognizes the efforts of the inventors thus granting their inventions as a technology or a product

The US Patent office, in regards to the discharge of the duties of the patent, studies the grants and applications as to whether the filed patents fit in the parameters of registration process. This office also distributes and publishes the information of the patent, maintains the search files of U.S and foreign patents etc. The US Patent office distributes the copies of the official records and patents on a public level. Training is also provided to the practitioners by this office.

The procedure of getting a patent includes a thorough survey of the market that you wish to enter. One of the most significant steps of getting a patent is that the inventor needs to prove that there was no prior effort done for such kind of invention.

Last but no the least the inventor needs to make an application to the USPTO to be eligible to qualify for the legal procedure. With all these essential steps of getting a US Patent, you can get your invention on a technology or as a product.

US Patent is a post from: US Intellectual Property Law

]]> http://www.iplawintheus.com/us-patent/feed/ 0 The US Patent Office http://www.iplawintheus.com/the-us-patent-office/ http://www.iplawintheus.com/the-us-patent-office/#comments Sun, 11 Jul 2010 03:38:54 +0000 Andrew http://www.iplawintheus.com/the-us-patent-office/ The US Patent Office is a post from: US Intellectual Property Law

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The procedure of getting a patent is not easy and needs to be done through a proper procedure. This procedure involves meticulous legal process, through which it has to go through, and involves spending a lot of money. However, for people who cannot afford to pay these big amounts can secure their patents by themselves. The Federal Law has authorized the U.S Patent Office and Trademark Office (USPTO) to assist the people who have applied for patents without the help of their lawyers.

A patent can be stated as an invention that is granted by a government and the creator of such patent is conferred with the sole rights in regards with the usage, making and the selling of the invention. After a certain thing is invented the creator of this invention, needs to go through a procedure to get this patent on a technology or a product. There are various steps of getting a patent and numerous reasons for getting the same

The united patent Office is an organization of the U.S Department of Commerce. The primary function of this organization is to permit patents for protecting the valuable inventions and to grant them with the trademarks. This procedure recognizes the efforts of the inventors thus granting their inventions as a technology or a product.

They help and advise the President of the United States, the departments and the offices of the Department of Commerce, the Secretary of Commerce and other government organizations in solving the issue on the global and domestic level. The US Patent/United Patent Office encourages the technical and industrial progress the strength and economy of the nation through the protection, categorization and distribution about the information of the patent.

The united patent office, in relation of the discharge of the duties concerning the patent, inspects the grants and applications as to whether the filed patents fit in the parameters of registration. This office also distributes and publishes the information of the patent, maintains the search files of U.S and foreign patents etc.

They also distribute copies of the official records and patents on a public level. Training is also provided to the practitioners by this office.

The US Patent Office is a post from: US Intellectual Property Law

]]> http://www.iplawintheus.com/the-us-patent-office/feed/ 0 Patents and Trademarks http://www.iplawintheus.com/patents-and-trademarks/ http://www.iplawintheus.com/patents-and-trademarks/#comments Fri, 25 Jun 2010 17:13:28 +0000 Andrew http://www.iplawintheus.com/patents-and-trademarks/ Patents and Trademarks is a post from: US Intellectual Property Law

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Any organizations in order to distinguish their product from others use certain symbols, signs or logos. This is termed as trademark or patent; it is a kind of intellectual property right. Here the organization has a specific product which is prepared by their own R&D and they try to ascertain that no one uses their products or the concept which was used to prepare their products.

In order to do so it is very much essential these organization starts using some kinds of identification such as name, logo, symbol or even a combination of these. These identification helps in establishing the uniqueness of the product and hence other organizations are barred from using the techniques adopted by the companies for selling their own product.

Patents and trademarks provide an organization exclusive rights which help them to protect their concept or idea from being used by someone else. The patent and trademarks rights are there for a particular period of time; after which any other person or organizations are free to use the concept or idea. If during these specified period if someone else tries to use the technique for their own benefit then it is illegal and the patentee can take legal action against the offender.

To patent a product one has to submit an application in the patent office; upon verification the application is either accepted or rejected. In the application the applicant provides detail about his invention and makes claim that he should be given patent of the product or concept which he has invented.

In case of patents and trademarks infringement then the title-holder has all the right to initiate legal action against the person or organization that has violated the clause.
Different countries have different laws to deal with the infringement but every country tries to protect the right of the patentee. The patentee may too provide various excuses as to why he did resort to such an illegal procedure.

Trademarks are essential because it helps the marketers to create a brand image of their product. The general masses are able to identify the product through these trademarks. In the advertisement too trademarks are used; these trademarks help in creating image of the product in the eyes of the customers. The symbol � or � to indicate that the organization has gone for the trademark; when the symbol � is used it means that the organization has not gone for the government approval but when the symbol � is used it means that the government has gone for prior approval from an authorizing agency such as the government.

It is imperative that the patents and trademarks should be continuously used in lawful manner otherwise its validity will expire. In most of the cases if the trademarks is not used for 5 years then its validity expires and one may have to go for renewal which may or may not be given depending on the situation.

Patents and trademarks are helping many genuine inventor and organization from protecting their invention from the others.

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]]> http://www.iplawintheus.com/patents-and-trademarks/feed/ 0 Trademark http://www.iplawintheus.com/trademark/ http://www.iplawintheus.com/trademark/#comments Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:44:37 +0000 Andrew http://www.iplawintheus.com/trademark/ Trademark is a post from: US Intellectual Property Law

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What Exactly is a Trademark for? ™

You always see those ™ trademarks all over everything from movie posters to toys to food packaging. If you ask most people, they’ll be able to tell you that the Trade Mark has “Something to do with copyright… doesn’t it?”

Licensing, copyright, trademark, intellectual property, it gets confusing trying to sort them all out sometimes. So let’s just focus on Trademark for a minute, and try to put it in simple terms without too much in the way of legal terminology that reads like a foreign language.

A trademark is defined as a distinctive sign, or an indicator of some sort, put to use by either an individual, a company, or a legal entity, so as to mark the source of the products that bear the trademark.

The ™ is not the trademark. The ™ symbol is only used to indicate that what you are reading is, in fact, a legal, registered trademark. For example, when you look at a sign that reads Coca-Cola™, it’s actually the word Coca-Cola that is the registered trademark, not the ™ slapped onto the end. The ™ is only there to indicate that the trademark is registered, so as to dissuade anyone from trying to appropriate the trademark for their own use without permission or license from the trademark owner.

Trademarks are not registered solely to names, either, but also to logos, symbols, a specific word when written in a specific font, iconic imagery, etcetera. Basically, anything that can be used as a “mark” to place on all products from a common source. Sort of like Batman or Superman wearing their own trademarks on their shirts. The trademark is sort of a signature for either an individual or a larger legal entity.

A registered trademark differs from copyright ownership in that the trademark is just the symbol applied to something. A company needs to copyright individual products, and cannot simply rely on slapping their ™ on it and consider it copyright protected.

So, a copyright protects the intellectual property of an individual or a company, such as films, a soda pop recipe, a t-shirt design, etcetera, while registering a trademark protects a logo, a company name, or a signature tag of some sort.

In the United States, when a trademark is applied to a service, rather than a product, it is called a Service Mark.

The owner of a registered trademark or service mark is free to pursue legal action regarding matters of trademark infringement, and may also take steps to prevent a trademark from being used without authorization. However, registration is not actually required. If possible, it is preferable, but not absolutely necessary. A common law trademark may file suit, but without registration, the trademark may only be considered valid in the region where the trademark has been used by its originator.

An amusing incident wherein this was taken advantage of: In the 1980’s, when the Christopher Reeve’s Superman movies were released, the essence of the Superman character sort of boiled down to the big red “S” trademark on his chest, and the symbol had only been a common law trademark at the time. This left filmmakers in India, Turkey, Italy, and Spain to make their own Superman movies without fear of legal repercussions by changing details about the actual character as such that the big red “S” was really the only similarity left. Because these movies were neither condoned nor informed by the trademark holders, the results could be pretty far out, casting well known heroes as homicidal villains and so on.

So in other words, registering your trademark is only necessary if you hope to own the trademark in other countries and so on. If you’re not really worried about that, you only need to do a little research to make sure your trademark isn’t already taken, and then put a ™ next to that trademark wherever it appears.

For clarification, a trademark only covers itself. A trademark does not extend into copyright laws. Placing a trademark on a product of your creation does not make that product your legal intellectual property. Inventions need to be patented, and creative concepts need to be copyrighted. The trademark only covers your distinctive logo, title, stamp, or other signature. In some cases, as we mentioned, with Superman, the trademark can be such a major part of a character or idea that it’s practically all you need to worry about (nobody’s going to make a Superman story without the big red S, for example), but in general, having a trademark is only good for protecting a brand name, and not other intellectual property.

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]]> http://www.iplawintheus.com/trademark/feed/ 2 intellectual property http://www.iplawintheus.com/intellectual-property/ http://www.iplawintheus.com/intellectual-property/#comments Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:21:46 +0000 Andrew http://www.iplawintheus.com/intellectual-property/ intellectual property is a post from: US Intellectual Property Law

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Intellectual Property, the Law, and Morality

Intellectual property can refer to one of two things: The first being the legal field which concerns “creations of the mind”, including music, art, literature, etcetera. The second being those works themselves. The law of intellectual property deals with such things as copyrights and trademarks, patents, licensing rights (as in lending an idea out to another party), and so on.

Under basic intellectual property law, the holder of one of these abstract properties has a number of exclusive rights to the concepts. This could mean anything from a bare idea, to a fictional character, to the content of a finished work of art or entertainment.

In general, intellectual property rights are restricted to so called non-rival goods. Technically, this refers to goods that can be used by one person without preventing another person from using it just as well. This means products that can be easily shared, or reproduced at little to no cost, from an original source that can’t really be exhausted. For example, a comic book could be photocopied forever and handed out for free without taking any physical property away from the original owner.

The legality of certain intellectual property issues has always been, to be frank, kind of convoluted. Oftentimes, it’s hard to determine who exactly owns a given property, and to what extent they own that property. One famous example involved John Fogerty, former frontman of Creedence Clearwater Revival, being sued by his former record label for stealing a Creedence Clearwater Revival song he had released through that label, and rewriting it into a new song. So yes, the laws regarding intellectual property can be so convoluted that you can even be sued for stealing your own material from yourself.

Since the rise of high speed internet, we’ve seen a lot of debate regarding the morality issues that come with owning, buying, and borrowing intellectual property. It is, to be honest, a somewhat difficult issue to split into a black and white, good and evil worldview. Even the artists who own certain intellectual property are split on the issue. On the one hand, there’s Metallica, the band who made a lot of news some years ago when they sued several of their fans for downloading their music for free on the internet. On the other hand, there’s Trent Reznor, who’s latest album was released one hundred percent free of charge via the internet.

One of the main questions regarding intellectual property morality, for the listener, is this: When does it become theft? Where is the line drawn?

Many musicians will let you listen to their entire album for free online, but won’t let you download that album. Supposing most listeners will just keep visiting the listen-for-free website every time they want to hear those songs again, it may seem like a pretty small difference.

Furthermore, it’s kind of hard to track what kind of an impact file-sharing has on record sales and movie tickets in the long run. Many who download bootlegs of a movie are just too busy to see the movie, and will happily buy the movie when it’s released in theatres, while others are just looking to get something for nothing. Many who illegally download music on the internet may go out and then buy CDs from the artist they just listened to (though to be fair, most probably won’t).

The upside is that every artist has an open door to free publishing. Thirty years ago, a musician absolutely needed to be signed by a major label before anyone would ever hear their music. Today, you can stick your music up on a file sharing site and, if you hit the right niche market, you might get thousands of fans overnight. In the 1980’s in the UK, there were strict limits placed on movie distribution, and fans of horror films had to resort to trading illegal copies between friends (the so-called “video nasties”). If you ask most of these horror movie directors, they’d probably prefer it this way.

It’s a complex issue, and no matter how much you study on IP law, you still might get blindsided by a loophole or a surprise lawsuit. However, if you don’t read up on IP law a bit, you’re just plain not going to be prepared for anything. If you’re looking to sell anything of your own design, be it a comic book, a t-shirt design or even a greeting card, arm yourself with as much knowledge on intellectual property law as you can fit in your head.

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]]> http://www.iplawintheus.com/intellectual-property/feed/ 0 Global copyrighting http://www.iplawintheus.com/global-copyrighting/ http://www.iplawintheus.com/global-copyrighting/#comments Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:05:49 +0000 Andrew http://www.iplawintheus.com/global-copyrighting/ Global copyrighting is a post from: US Intellectual Property Law

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Global Copyrighting Infringement

If you lived in Turkey around the time George Lucas released the first “Star Wars” films, you may remember a movie called “Turkish Star Wars”. You may also have seen some clips from this movie if you have ever visited youtube, or had a friend show you the movie for a laugh.

“Turkish Star Wars” was able to legally use the trademark title “Star Wars” because, apparently, the title was not actually protected in Turkey. This is because, if you have a trademark, that trademark is generally not protected anywhere except for where you actually use that trademark. So if there are no stores selling Coca-Cola in your jurisdiction, you are free to start your own company and call it Coca-Cola. The actual recipe for the cola is most definitely copyright protected throughout most of the world, but trademarks are only protected where they are in use.

So, “Turkish Star Wars” was able to get away with using trademarked names and titles. This is because of the era that the movie was released in. For a time, Turkey was going through massive political upheaval. During this time, it was very difficult to find American films. So if George Lucas’s “Star Wars” wasn’t officially released in Turkey, the trademark was left free for anyone who wanted it.

A common practice at the time was to capitalize on the lack of competition by making quick-and-cheap movies, remaking American hits with Turkish cast, crew, and setting. Besides “Star Wars” there is also a Turkish “Wizard of Ox” “The Exorcist” and “E.T.”.

What’s kind of funny about all this is that, even though the use of the title and character names was completely legal, the actual film pretty much qualifies as copyright infringement under Turkey’s current copyright laws, which have since been altered to align with WIPO standards. At the time, however, there was very little George Lucas could have done to have protected his intellectual property from the misappropriation committed by “Turkish Star Wars”, short of say, flying all the way to Turkey, in the middle of a political upheaval, and suing a small-time filmmaker and making very little to compensate for damages and so on, that is, if his case held up at all. Remember that Star Wars was not released in Turkey at that time, and so, the judge may very well have sided with the bootleggers.

The movie actually features an entirely original plotline. Turkish Luke Skywalker is not Darth Vader’s son, and Turkish Darth Vader wears a colorful Mexican wrestler costume. This might be seen as a way to avoid copyright infringement, but it’s more likely that the director simply did not speak English when he saw the original “Star Wars”, and did not understand the story. Another possibility is that the director hadn’t actually seen “Star Wars” at all by the time he shot the film.

Why do we say that?

Well, the movie is full of shots taken directly from the original films. More specifically, the shots taken directly from the original film are shots that are in the trailers to the films. For example, during a scene where Turkish Luke Skywalker is flying his X-Wing, we see that he is apparently sitting in front of a big screen TV playing clips of the “Blowing up the Death Star” sequence from the original “Star Wars”. Therefore, even if the story is entirely different, the appropriation of actual footage from the film definitely counts as plagiarism and copyright infringement. Not only that, but the music from the film is one hundred percent stolen from other films and television shows, such as “Star Wars” itself, but also, “Battlestar Galactica” and several others.

No legal action was ever brought against the filmmakers. It may have been that George Lucas simply didn’t think the matter was worth pursuing, or that he hadn’t even heard of “Turkish Star Wars”. That doesn’t really mean that the movie was not actually copyright infringement though. It’s kind of interesting, if you look at international cinema between the sixties and the eighties, it was pretty common practice to appropriate story elements and music and so on from other movies. Even as recently as John Woo’s “A Better Tomorrow II” in the mid 1980’s was full of music stolen directly from the Nicolas Cage vehicle “Birdie”. It’s not because this kind of thing was legal, at all, rather… it was just very easy to get away with. If the original author even knew what these people were doing in the first place, more often than not, a lawsuit just seemed like more trouble than it was worth.

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]]> http://www.iplawintheus.com/global-copyrighting/feed/ 0 By-mail copyright http://www.iplawintheus.com/by-mail-copyright/ http://www.iplawintheus.com/by-mail-copyright/#comments Mon, 09 Nov 2009 01:27:12 +0000 Andrew http://www.iplawintheus.com/by-mail-copyright/ By-mail copyright is a post from: US Intellectual Property Law

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The Effectiveness of By-Mail Copyright

The traditional, and honestly, the most effective way to register a copyright and make sure that it actually holds up in a court of law, is to go through a notary public. The exact duties and abilities of a notary public may actually vary slightly from state to state, country to country, or jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but the general purpose of a notary public is to serve as a sort of official, legal witness to things like contract signings, wills, and, of course, copyrights.

Note that copyrights, patents, and trademarks are three different things. A trademark is made official the moment you start using it.

You don’t need to actually register a trademark for the trademark to be, legally, your trademark. A trademark can be a logo, a signature, or even a company name, and it is officially yours in any jurisdiction where you are using it (though others are free to use it wherever your trademark is not in use).

A patent must first be applied for through a patenting office. Patents pertain to inventions, but the term “invention” actually extends past what you might think of as an invention, ie. technological gadgets and so on. A patent could be something like the rules and control scheme for a video game, a formula for a perfume, or even an improvement on an existing, patented invention.

And copyrights, of course, pertain to intellectual property. Not so much like, say, blueprints and plans for actual, tangible inventions or anything complex like a video game engine, but anything abstract enough to not really fit into a blueprint. This can include fictional characters and settings, stories, music, and so on.

Copyrights are the only one of these three which can be protected by simply sending yourself a copy of the work you wish to copyright in the mail. Normally, a notary public would stamp a manuscript of your new novel, a sketch of your comic book characters, some sheet music, etcetera. When you can’t find a notary public, or you can’t afford the (admittedly modest) fees charged by notary publics, the by-mail copyright method is a quick, cheap, and easy way to protect yourself.

The way it works is that, when the envelope containing your work goes through the mail, it will be postmarked. Let’s say you send yourself a manuscript in 2007, and then, in 2008, you send that manuscript to a publisher. The publisher likes the book, but as it turns out, the publisher is also pretty unscrupulous. They hire a ghost writer to change character names around and change the title, while leaving everything else about the same. The publisher then registers a copyright for the book. Now, if you’ve left your manuscript in the envelope you sent it to yourself in, then you can take that into court, open it up, and prove that you actually wrote that book one year before the publisher registered his own copyright on the slightly modified version of the book.

How well does that really hold up, though?

To be honest, it’s kind of up to the judge’s discretion. There have been plenty of cases where the by-mail copyright has saved an author’s behind, but there have been just as many cases where the judge did not recognize it as a real copyright.

One worry might be that anyone who were so inclined could simply mail themselves an envelope. A year later they decide to file a crazy lawsuit against a book publisher just to make some quick cash, so they take a popular novel, rewrite it into a manuscript, print it out, and then open their year-old envelope, put the manuscript in, and re-seal it. It sounds crazy, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

A notary public’s stamp, on the other hand, is one hundred percent official, and the US court system is obligated to honor it.

As a temporary fix, the so called “poor man’s copyright” method is better than nothing. Likewise, if you can’t afford notary public fees (but come on, notary public fees aren’t really all that expensive, and if you have a friend who’s a notary public, he or she might do it for free), again, it’s better than nothing.

But it’s not as good as a real copyright.

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]]> http://www.iplawintheus.com/by-mail-copyright/feed/ 0 Buying intellectual property http://www.iplawintheus.com/buying-intellectual-property/ http://www.iplawintheus.com/buying-intellectual-property/#comments Sun, 08 Nov 2009 13:44:19 +0000 Andrew http://www.iplawintheus.com/buying-intellectual-property/ Buying intellectual property is a post from: US Intellectual Property Law

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Buying Intellectual Property

There are a lot of different ways of selling or buying intellectual property, actually.

Outright Purchase

For the longest time, the only way an artist could get published was basically to forfeit any and all of their ownership rights on the work. They could either hand the entire work over to the publisher, including the rights to reproduce further copies without giving any royalties to the original creator, the rights to make a film out of the property, without paying the creator, the rights to produce sequels or continue the story, without the authors approval… and without paying the author, and even to remove the author’s name from the work. Certainly, in the early twentieth century, it was very, very commonplace for fiction magazine publishers to take the author’s name off of a work and replace it with a pseudonym. This way, they could use the pseudonym for a dozen other writers if they ever wanted to fire the original author.

If you have created some content and are looking into publishing your work, please, please, avoid this if at all possible. In some scenarios, you might not actually have another choice, but usually, you actually do. If one publisher likes your work enough to buy it, chances are that another publisher will like your work well enough to print it, but while treating you a little more fairly.

Publishing Rights

Ideally, you only want to sell a narrowly defined set of publishing rights. For example, if you sell the publishing rights for a certain amount of time, or for just one or two reprints, etcetera. Different publishers might offer different deals, but what it should come down to is this: You actually retain ownership of the work, but the publisher has the right to publish it under a certain, predetermined agreement.

If you sell publishing rights, you can usually expect a flat fee, though in some cases it may be accompanied by royalties further on down the line. In such a case, the initial fee might be lower than if you had just sold the publishing rights alone, but if the book sells well, you stand to make a lot more money in the long run.

Royalties

Sometimes when selling publishing rights, you will be given the option of collecting royalties: Say yes. Royalties would be payment issued per-sale. Maybe not per book or per CD or anything, because exact sales can be hard to track, but rather, per unit shipped, or else a percentage of overall revenue generated by your work.

Licensing

When you walk through the store and you see a bunch of Ninja Turtle action figures produced by a toy company, bear in mind that the Ninja Turtles do not actually belong to that toy company.

Right now, the Ninja Turtles belong to one of the original creators of the characters: Peter Laird. Peter Laird’s name will come up a lot in discussions regarding licensing, because, after George Lucas, he may be one of the most financially successful people who made the majority of his money through licensing.

Licensing involves allowing your intellectual property to be put to use on things like toys, t-shirts, video games, and so on. The only thing you’re selling is the license to create that merchandise, and if you’ve negotiated your contract well, you should see a percentage or royalties as well.

Some people feel that merchandising damages the integrity of the original work, but really, it’s more of a personal decision than an objective, black and white case of ethics. The integrity of an intellectual property is really defined by its owner, not by some divine, universal book of right and wrong.

But know this, licensing allows you to retain all of your ownership, and, if your stuff catches on, make some recurring income on your ideas.

If you’re really serious about making a living on your work, you really should hold out for a good deal. For a week or so, you might regret turning down an offer to sell your property, but if you do sell your property outright and it makes somebody else rich while you make barely enough to eat for a few months…

As an artist, a programmer, an author, a musician, or anything else, you should protect your work, and retain ownership. Ideally, your work should become an asset, something that you can see revenue from even twenty years from now. If you sell outright, that won’t happen.

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]]> http://www.iplawintheus.com/buying-intellectual-property/feed/ 0 Bootleg http://www.iplawintheus.com/bootleg/ http://www.iplawintheus.com/bootleg/#comments Sun, 08 Nov 2009 04:13:46 +0000 Andrew http://www.iplawintheus.com/bootleg/ Bootleg is a post from: US Intellectual Property Law

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What are Bootlegs?

The word bootleg actually has a number of meanings. The one we’re all probably most familiar with would be counterfeit, or unauthorized merchandise.

In the context of counterfeit and unauthorized merchandise, bootlegging is one hundred percent illegal.

For example, many t-shirt vendors outside of concerts are actually bootlegging. Anybody with a transfer press, or even an iron, can create hundreds of t-shirts in very little time. Even those without the requisite equipment can simply walk into a sportswear or custom clothing shop and commission dozens or hundreds of t-shirts. Most custom clothing shops do not actually know whether or not every single graphic, trademark, or band name is actually legal for their customers to reproduce, and so, it is very easy to maintain a bootlegging business.

Many bands and venues actually don’t mind bootlegged merchandise, but this doesn’t change the legality. Without express written permission or license, bootlegging counterfeit merchandise is one hundred percent illegal.

An urban legend has it that the word bootleg actually comes from the days of booze smugglers during the American prohibition. Many rum runners would actually hide alcohol in their boots or baggy pants to sneak it past police officers.

Another use of the word bootlegging refers to so called “bootleg recordings”, which are usually recordings that are actually commercially unavailable, but which can be bought through unlicensed, illegal, or illegitimate means. In such an event, the original artist usually does not receive any money, but fans often justify this by claiming that they would gladly pay for that recording if it were released commercially.

Wherever you stand on this issue, ethically, the fact remains that it is not really legal. Again, some artists don’t actually mind it, but still, it is illegal, and whatever the artist’s stance on bootleg recordings, their record label might not feel the same way.

Yet another meaning for the word bootleg would be illegal, emulated video game ROMs. Video games for obsolete systems are pretty easy to copy and put on your computer, and then to distribute for free online. This is another instance where many fans will justify that this is ethical, simply because the games are not commercially available anymore, and haven’t been in, perhaps, several decades. Still, the process is illegal.

There is a bit of confusion regarding bootleg video game ROMs. Many websites state that, if you actually own the video game, that downloading an illegal ROM is completely legal. Others state that you can download a ROM for a twenty four hour period of time, and then delete it, and that this process is perfectly legal.

Neither of these arguments hold much water, though. Downloading unlicensed, bootleg video game ROMs is completely illegal.

Nintendo, Sony and various other companies have taken steps to shut down the websites that distribute these ROMs, and ROMs are actually becoming harder and harder to find these days. There haven’t really been any big cases wherein a ROM collector was charged fines or threatened with jail time for keeping a private collection of ROMs on their computer, but that doesn’t change the fact that bootlegging ROMs is illegal, and that, whether it’s happened yet or not, the owners of the copyrighted material being bootlegged would be well within their rights to press charges against a private ROM collector.

Incidentally, the emulators, programs which allow you to play these video games as if your computer were a Nintendo Entertainment System or a Sega Genesis, are completely legal. This is because it is entirely possible to create wholly new, original games for these emulators. As a result, most video game emulation websites you see will provide you with emulators and homemade game ROMs for those emulators, but will not provide you with illegal ROMs, nor will they provide you with links to illegal ROMs. Many even ban users from their message boards for even asking for, or linking to, illegal ROMs.

Ten years ago, these emulation websites were a little more liberal with their policies, providing illegal ROMs and links to illegal ROM websites, but more recently, with video game companies shutting down these websites, most mainstream emulation websites are taking care of their own interests by distancing themselves from the illegal ROM communities.

Bootleg is a post from: US Intellectual Property Law

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