Short answer: under copyright law software is protected automatically the moment you create it, the owner gets a bundle of exclusive rights, there are real exceptions like fair use, and registering early is what lets you collect statutory damages and attorney’s fees. Here are the four things I tell software
Short answer: intellectual property is an umbrella for four bodies of law, copyright, trademark, patent, and trade secret, and a software company touches all four. Copyright protects your code, trade secret protects what you keep confidential, trademark protects your brand, and patents (rarely) protect inventions. I get this question often
Short answer: if you let a partner, reseller, or OEM use your trademark without a written license and without exercising real quality control, you can be found to have naked licensed the mark, and the penalty is losing it entirely. The fix is simple: a trademark license with quality control
Fair use lets a software company use someone else’s copyrighted work in limited cases, and it is the same doctrine others can use against you. Here is the four-factor test, what the Supreme Court’s recent decisions changed, and when to get a license instead.
Short answer: your software pricing can be confidential, but it is not confidential automatically. Software pricing confidentiality becomes legally enforceable only when you treat the pricing as secret before it ever leaves your building, and the cleanest way to do that is a signed confidentiality agreement or NDA. I get
Short answer: if you run a software company, the 2026 expansion of the domain name system is mostly a brand-protection question, not a marketing one. ICANN has opened its first new generic top-level domain (gTLD) application round in over a decade, including domains in non-Latin scripts, and the practical move
Short answer: under copyright law, whoever creates content owns it, so when you outsource your marketing content the freelancer owns it, not you, unless your contract says otherwise in writing. Marketing content copyright does not transfer just because you paid the invoice. Marketing is increasingly about becoming a publisher. You
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