Final Project: Did you agree or disagree with the rulings. Provide some authority for your argument such as quotes from the book.

To know who owns the design is an important matter in the design industry, I asked the lawyer who owns the design if the client did not fund it initially or post of the design. “The true owner of the design will be determined by the instrument or contract originally entered into between the parties. If the client did not pay for the work, the designer can still sue for damages and made whole by the court. The court will award at least the costs the designer incurred in developing the design and in any case it would be advised that the designer trademark the design if it has not yet been done.” I totally disagree with the lawyer under this circumstance because this falls directly under copyright law. He stated to trademark the design, but it is a design and to copyright it gives “exclusive rights to make copies, to authorize others to make copies, to sell the work, right to display the work, right to perform the work and the right to obtain in court relief in the event other infringe.” I agreed with the lawyer on packaging issue where other companies use the same color and looks of products such as Tylenol. “Trademark law protects the rights of businesses who use distinct names, designs, logos, and signifiers to identify their products.” It is also very important to understand the difference between copyright and patent. “Copyright law protects all forms of expression fixed in a tangible medium” while patents protect ideas that take the form of useful, novel and nonobvious inventions.” The lawyer was asked if a fashion design was created and displayed at the trade show and someone took the design and sold it as their own, can they sue? He answered “if displayed at a fashion show before the idea was trademarked, then the designer may sue.” However there are also certain rules to this because of statute of limitations. “A person accused of infringing another’s copyright, patent or trademark may argue in defense that the plaintiff waited too long to file suit, that is they violated the statute of limitations. In civil cases, you can’t file suit more than three years after the discovery of the infringment.”

Final Project: Rule of law -- a concise summary of the main precedent established. Support with quotes form the book

Web design, graphic design, and just basically any type of design will have some sort of intellectual property issue or some type of argument. Since these are ideas, work such as art that are ‘produced’ by us designers, we face a career that affects us if we don’t understand how the law within intellectual property protects us. By being a web designer, the world wide web holds a special feature – stealing! And stealing ideas when something is someone else’s work can be punishable in court. “A party who claims to own a mark (the plaintiff) may file a lawsuit against another use of the same or similar mark (the defendant) to prevent further use of the mark and collect money damages for the wrongful use.” If I make a logo and it has a trademark on one of the letters since the letter was custom drawn and embedded into the text and someone uses that custom drawn logo on there logo as well, I can file infringement action towards that party. When helping a client come up with a domain name it is very important to make sure that “The domain name is not infringing a trademark. If a domain name is likely to confuse consumers because it is similar to another trademark, the domain name used may be terminated.” As a website designer in today’s industry, search engine optimization or SEO is a huge factor for search and advertising capability. Metatags are used to describe certain or major keywords that will help the site to be searched and ranked in top 10 of a search engine. “There are some instances when the use of another company’s trademark is permitted in a metatag for example if the tag is used to describe the goods or services of a company or geographic origin.”

Final Project: Reasoning of the Law -- analysis of the thinking process and logic used by your lawyer

My attorney’s answers were to the point and I felt that his answers were very fully answered. The answers were not “legal advice” but his own side and take since he was in the industry. His thinking process was very critical, it seemed like he had to critically think about the situation and put himself in the situation before answering the legal issue. One of the legal issues was if a logo had a trademark to one of the letters and another marketing company used that letter exactly how it is displayed/designed but used the letter in a logo but did not have the same complete logo then can action be taken. He answered this issue in steps or sort of a process that had to be proven in court to win. He answered “If the competitor uses and exact letter trademark design, the original designer must first prove to the court that they properly recorded the trademark design. It will then be up to the competitor to prove that the infringing design was not stolen or copied. The competitor must show that they not intentionally steal the design. Even so, the court may award damages to the original designer or may just force the competitor to stop using the design.” As answered above, his answer was very well put together and explains the process in this type of legal situation. My lawyers thinking process by answering them as a professional seemed like it would be totally different if I went to him and actually had a case similar to the one above. I assume that if I had a case similar he would actually be taking notes down and using references and other types of sources to understand the case better to win the case.

Final Project: Explain why these are of interest to you. What specific concepts and terms were involved – in other words, what are the legal issues?

There are a lot of legal issues that are a big interest in my life, my career and my personal life. Since we had to choose legal issues that pertain to our career, I went ahead and followed the prompt and chose legal issues that deal specifically with intellectual property and how trademarks, patents and copyrights can protect our rights to our designs and our ideas. I asked questions like it is possible to sue the company for use of digital media? I also asked questions like, can I sue a party and what are my chances of recovering my design. Some trademark issues I had in question were if I made a logo that had a trademark to one of the letters and another marketing company used that letter exactly how it is displayed/designed but used the letter in a logo but did not have the same complete logo then what could happen if I take legal action. I also brought up legal issue where companies that advertise a television commercial which sells a product that has a disclaimer at the bottom but doesn’t give you enough time to read the disclaimer and it ends up affecting your life and puts you in burden. I also asked copyright/trademark issues like can packaging look exactly the same as other products on a retail shelf with example of medicine. And lastly I asked a question that dealt with my logo, if I didn’t copyright a creation of mine and someone from my design team take it, can I take legal action.

Final Project: Legal Authority How I made contact, found this person and why they are a good choice.

Choosing a lawyer for any type of outside project, internship or some type of classwork or project is NOT the easiest task for educational purposes. I tried about 15-20 local lawyers of different fields and they sure are very hard to get a hold of. First of all, its tough enough to get past the receptionist and you have to have some real good story to why you want to talk to the lawyer. You have to almost make it seem like you have a possible case in hand! Out of the approximate 20 attorneys I contacted, I was able to talk to two of them and they said they did not have the time to help me because they were just really crammed with work. So I decided to call friends to see if they knew someone who could help me and even contacted family. It turns out one of my long lost cousins who I barely speak to was a lawyer. He told me he graduated for Cooley Law School in Michigan and ended up in Las vegas. It was really hard to interview him over the phone because his time was very valuable so I ended up emailing him my legal issues and he emailed back with answers and of course he gave me 30 mins of his valuable time and we talked about the legal issues and it was very interesting to see how he responded since his expertise is tax law. This was a great choice because he truly helped me out and now I know I have family who can help me out incase if I am in trouble with my career or personal life.