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1. Sell the judgment to a collection agency or to someone who went to Dave Del Dotto's get-rich seminar.

2. Find out how to fill out the forms and collect it yourself, say by a) going to the courthouse law library and look it up, or b) reading Collect Your Judgment by Nolo Press (which is based on California law but the principles are probably basically the same).

3. (2) presupposes the judgment debtor has a paycheck, bank account, job or real or personal property you can get at. Sometimes if all else fails you can file the judgment as a lien with the county and get paid, with interest, years later when they die or sell their house.

But if the evidence is considered a trade secret, don't they have the right to request that the evidence be kept sealed so that it's not available to the public? I think this happened with the Microsoft anti-trust trial.

You are correct to a point. IANAL, but I believe that once a trade secret is "in the wild", it is no longer protected. The only violator that can be punished is the person who originally violated the secret (in this case IBM, according to SCO). Anyone who got the code from IBM (or a third party), and who does not have a reason to suspect that the code in question is a trade secret, would not be liable. Therefore, there is no reason to seal the code since it is now in the public domain.

In a case where the trade secret may have been divulged, but not widely, then, yes, the court records may be sealed.

For an excellent summary of Trade Secret Law, see the Nolo Press Page.

Found this article that attempts to explain it all. I'm not sure how old the article is, unfortunately. It supports what I stated in the parent post, but further shows that companies can establish seperate legal entities to handle different sections of business. For example, a store can exist in the state, and then create a seperate branch to handle Internet business. By using this loophole, they can escape charging sales-tax for many online purchases.

Check out a nolo press book on the subject here: nolo.com

Here's a quote:

"In some residential areas -- especially in affluent communities -- local zoning ordinances absolutely prohibit all types of business."

In the next line:

"In the great majority of municipalities, however, residential zoning rules allow small, non-polluting home businesses, as long as any home containing a business is used primarily as a residence and the business activities don't negatively affect neighbors."

They sell many books specifically for the small / home buisiness.

Hope this helps, and good luck!

Ever head of an attractive nuisance ?

Wow, can I get your filing fees? Then, I'll go ahead and file your patent, as a small entity, for a whooping $500. That's selling *10* devices, not 100. And if you can't sell 10 of them, then trust me, it's not worth patenting.

Reality is, the Patent Office does try to make this affordable for small inventors. Almost everyone can swing $500 for filing fees.

Now if you want to hire a patent attorney to write your application, well then you're looking at closer to $10,000. But, if you don't have the money, but have the time, I highly recommend Patent It Yourself by Nolo Press. It'll help you write your patent for a grand total of $40. So, with filing fees, Assignments, and postage, the exercise might cost you $600. That's 12 of your devices at $50 profit. Not too shabby.

Thalia, why yes, I am a patent attorney

I highly recommend
Tax Savvy For Small Business for small-business newbies.

You file where YOU are, which is where the crime took place.

Experts disagree.

(From the first link)

"You sue an Illinois citizen in an Illinois state court for breach of contract. It doesn't matter where you live, or where the events leading up to the lawsuit took place because an Illinois state court has personal jurisdiction over all citizens of Illinois."

This makes sense. Otherwise it would be incredibly unfair to defendents, who would have to travel to the location of the plaintiff on the plaintiff's whim.

Here's an article on Nolo. Here's the relevant portion:

Credit reports. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act or FCRA (15 U.S.C. 1681), employers must get an employee's written consent before seeking that employee's credit report. Many employers routinely include a request for such consent in their employment applications. If you decide not to hire or promote someone based on information in the credit report, you must give the person a copy of the report and tell them of their right to challenge the report under the FCRA. Some states have more stringent rules limiting the use of credit reports.

Frankly, I am very impressed.

You actually admitted buying "Tron"!

I love that movie, esp. after I figured out what the name really means. (Think "troff.")

*

The Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) governs much of this. Looking at what I wrote and as I write this, I realize I botched the second half of what I said. Returns of something where you had second thoughts, that's up to the store. But if the product is defective the "implied waraanty of merchantability" kicks in. Here is a brief FAQ. This implied warranty can be disclaimed, that is, you can choose to buy without it.

There is also a closely related implied warranty of fitness, you can look that up yourself. Now, these rules vary from state to state, and your state may confer additional rights -- you've probably seen language to that effect in mfr warranties. Trivia: the act of purchase normally invokes the implied and express warranties, regardless of whether you send in the stupid little card. (Read the cards carefully; they will almost never say you have to send them in.)

Thanks for straightening me out. :)

The thing here, besides lousy customer service and faulty goods, is that Target apparently had reason to know it was selling defective DVD's. If it continued to sell them anyway, it should liable for not just breach of warranty but fraud.

As for the same-title exchange, they should have a three-strikes-you're-refunded policy. The "lemon laws" of many states, for example, set a maximum number of times you have to take your new car in for service over, say, the first year, before they have to give you a new car or restitution.

Good job, I hope you smoothed the road for the next disappointed tron-ster. Now -- do you believe in the users?

I have used several books from NOLO Press to draft legal documents and contracts. All of which revolve around my Software business. Their books are very well written and understandable by us geeks with out a lot of legal knowledge.

One book stands out in my mind that you may want to check out - Web & Software Development: A Legal Guide. If you do end up talking with a lawery, this book may help you to fully understand what you want and to be able to make sure that everything is included in the contract.

Life is like an elevator, sometimes you get the elevator and sometimes you get the shaft

Not so.

It is equally prohibited (even criminal in some cases) to pass on what you know to be a trade secret if among other circumstances you "acquire a trade secret through improper means such as theft, industrial espionage or bribery [or] knowingly obtain trade secrets from people who have no right to disclose them ... [or] learn about a trade secret by accident or mistake, but had reason to know that the information was a protected trade secret." This includes journalists, if they know or ought to know that they're getting an illegal leak. (I was surprised by this, too, given the First A. and all.)

Nolo.com FAQ

I'm not a laywer, but luckily, some lawyers write web pages.

According to "Pre-Employment Testing of Applicants", written tests can be dangerous because "A multiple choice aptitude test may discriminate against minority applicants or female applicants because it really reflects test-taking ability rather than actual job skills."

Now there's the old thorny issue: If you give a test of type A and group P has a high tendancy to do badly on a test of type A, are you discriminating against group P?

Ha ha, you smarmy ass-sniffing twat-licker. Everything you have just said is not only dumb, but also wrong.

No offense, but the term ignorant comes to mind when I read your comment. Just so you know, there are plenty of references to my "Completely Untrue Statement". Seriously, if you want to whine about your tax dollars, find out how much of them go to subsidize big oil and then wonder why people think and say negative things about the Loner Star State.

1) Read everything Nolo provides regarding patents and trade secrets.
2) Patent it yourself.
3) Prepare an iron clad NDA/Trade Secret plan yourself.
4) Have a specalist lawyer bullet proof your NDA/Trade secret plan.
5) Hire a lawyer under your bullet proof trade secret plan
6) Hire someone who knows how to start a company while you help protect your ownership rights to your invention under your bullet proof plan.
7) Sell your super product
8) After you have earned enough money for you and your family, take some of the excess cash and pay lawyers to help you find ways to start a patent sharing scheme that grants people license to use your patent if they grant you rights to the inventions they create based on it.
9) If the company you found turns out to bite you make sure there is a poison pill where you as the inventor can open the invention free to the world without negative consequences.

Most importantly, ASK PHIL ZIMMERMAN FOR HELP EVEN IF YOU MUST BEG HIM OR BRIBE HIM. He's been there, and got screwed. Doubtless he learned something about how he would do it the second time around. You see he knows more about this than us Slashdotters.

BTW, if you are looking to hire an experienced software developer or just getting started at project management type. I need a damn job and you need a Gantt for your project. Just kidding, sorta.

1) Read everything Nolo provides regarding patents and trade secrets.
2) Patent it yourself.
3) Prepare an iron clad NDA/Trade Secret plan yourself.
4) Have a specalist lawyer bullet proof your NDA/Trade secret plan.
5) Hire a lawyer under your bullet proof trade secret plan
6) Hire someone who knows how to start a company while you help protect your ownership rights to your invention under your bullet proof plan.
7) Sell your super product
8) After you have earned enough money for you and your family, take some of the excess cash and pay lawyers to help you find ways to start a patent sharing scheme that grants people license to use your patent if they grant you rights to the inventions they create based on it.
9) If the company you found turns out to bite you make sure there is a poison pill where you as the inventor can open the invention free to the world without negative consequences.

Most importantly, ASK PHIL ZIMMERMAN FOR HELP EVEN IF YOU MUST BEG HIM OR BRIBE HIM. He's been there, and got screwed. Doubtless he learned something about how he would do it the second time around. You see he knows more about this than us Slashdotters.

BTW, if you are looking to hire an experienced software developer or just getting started at project management type. I need a damn job and you need a Gantt for your project. Just kidding, sorta.

"(and the $20,000 to patent it)"

You can patent it yourself. If you are smart enough to make a new form of encryption, you are smart enough to learn the patent law and procedures. See the book Patent It Yourself.

After a trip to the Washington, D.C. U.S. Patent and Trademark office, I found that the patent procedure was as corrupt as the people who make money from it could make it. However, you can do it yourself even though there are many people who work in the patent industry who will try to stand in your way.

The patent examiners themselves, who work for the U.S. government, are quite friendly and helpful, I found. That's a very good thing. I'm proud of the U.S. government for its personal, friendly service, which I've found is quite common.

Another idea is to prepare the patent yourself and have an honest attorney (if you can find one) look at it and make comments for improvement. It's a lot of work to prepare everything yourself, but it is a lot of work supervising an attorney, too. If my experience is any guide, patent attorneys will try to steal as much as possible, while being somewhat disinterested in the exact technology of your claims.

There is a huge, huge problem in the United States with lawyers being dishonest. Something should be done about this. I guess the dishonesty goes along with all the other corruption, such as wanting war so that the rich people that own weapons manufacturing companies can get richer: What should be the Response to Violence? . The present U.S. President George W. Bush was arrested once for drunk driving, and U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney was arrested twice for drunk driving. Former U.S. president Bill Clinton was the child of alcoholics. If you know the culture of alcoholics, you know that both presidents show plenty of evidence in their personalities of their involvement with alchohol. (Yes, Clinton abused sexuality, but Clinton was intellectually capable of being president.) My family has no experience with alcoholism, but in researching the (unfinished) book I've talked with many alcoholics who say that it usually requires several years of drunk driving before you get so relaxed with drunkenness that you get arrested while driving. There is a huge, huge leadership shortage in the United States. The best leaders in the U.S. are two men who have been arrested for a serious crime a total of three times? That's a shortage of leadership.

Anyhow, patenting something requires personal attention from you. It is not like buying a car; you cannot pay and walk away. You need to be very knowledgeable about the construction of claims. If you know that, and you can express yourself well in writing, it is not difficult to prepare all the documents. However, it is a lot of work.

Unless you're pretty sure you have a big winner on your hands, it probably isn't worth patenting. All a patent gives you is the right to ask the courts to stop a competitor from using your invention. Even after you go through all the rigamarole of having a patent granted, you still have to renew the patent and I believe there is a requirement that you show you are actually exploiting the invention toward a real product or service. Overall it's a long costly process that does not create any new wealth, it only gives you a big stick to smack the competition with. As an introduction, I recommend "Patent it yourself" published by Nolo Press.

NOLO Press ("Please Don't Feed The Lawyers") needs to be mentioned here. Not only to they publish some really great legal books for non-lawyes, but they also have several "Plain English Law Centers", including a legal encyclopedia, dictionary, FAQ, and so on.

I'm not affiliated with NOLO, except for the fact that I'm a very satisfied customer. I've started and run a couple of small technology businesses, and dealt with a fair amount of IP (both patent and trademark) and contract law issues, and NOLO books are great for educating yourself about what the real legal issues are, and when you really need to get an attorney involved.

-Mark
(IANAL, but my wife is -- and she approves of NOLO :)

NOLO Press ("Please Don't Feed The Lawyers") needs to be mentioned here. Not only to they publish some really great legal books for non-lawyes, but they also have several "Plain English Law Centers", including a legal encyclopedia, dictionary, FAQ, and so on.

I'm not affiliated with NOLO, except for the fact that I'm a very satisfied customer. I've started and run a couple of small technology businesses, and dealt with a fair amount of IP (both patent and trademark) and contract law issues, and NOLO books are great for educating yourself about what the real legal issues are, and when you really need to get an attorney involved.

-Mark
(IANAL, but my wife is -- and she approves of NOLO :)

You might want to read this and this before considering trying to become a lawyer.

You can find a good resource here.

John

Without a doubt the best guide to patenting without an attorney is the Nolo Press book by Pressman, Patent It Yourself, and it's attendent apparatus.

...and I write patent applications (plant patents, as opposed to utility patents) all the time.

My company has had dozens of plant patents granted, and the vast majority of them were done without lawyers.

I highly recommend Nolo Press's Patent It Yourself -- it walks you through the process and assumes you know nothing about it.

You have to be patient; the process, from application to grant, takes anywhere from 18 to 36 months. Also, filing with "small entity" status will halve most of the fees, but you'll need deep pockets in any case.

Good luck!

I would expect a lot of posts basically saying "patents are (or have become) for rich corporations to hoard their cash and take out the little guy. Here's my .02 cents:

If the lawyers are charging that much, do some research on your own and figure out how to do it yourself. Here are some quick links as starting points I found from google (I could wonder why the author didn't do this first, but oh well):

The US patent office homepage.
The patent grant and patent application.
The patent database. Your 200$/hr lawyer would probably look here.

You're on your own here, but a google search also returns some commercial websites that automate the process for you. The sponsored ad that came up in google seems reasonable. Another sponser ad was a book, which details how to apply for patents yourself (the reviews seem nice, but they always are).

I'm no lawyer, but presumably a few people at Nolo are, like the person that wrote this article about your rights at work. Surprising you have very little.

Go to Nolo and start reading. Read the small business guide (my guess is you'll want an LLC), read the Independant Contractors guide, Web and Software legal guide, and Copyright Your Software. You can probably find all the titles in the local library, though not the newest of some of them.

I can tell by the way you ask the question, you have a lot of homework to do. Find someone who has worked on their own and ask for help. Good luck but that is all the free advice you get on a Saturday afternoon.

But I also learned that the most difficult part of getting a business going and making it self-sustaining is marketing. Word of mouth will be your most powerful marketing tool, as others have suggested. However, in my experience, lead conversion is the most difficult part of building the business. Once someone expresses interest in your services, you have to convince them to actually lay down the cash to have you do the work.

One book I've found very helpful is "Managing the Professional Service Firm" by David Maister. This book really brought home to me the reality that as a technology consultant, you really are in the service business, and as such your marketing efforts have to be an integral part of everything you do.

Another thing I discovered is that getting someone to let you do work for them is not the same as them actually paying you in a timely manner. Developing a billing procedure that lets you provide deliverables in stages, which are tied to invoices, might be something to consider. We've been doing that for the past few months with much better results than the "build it, bill it, wait for weeks and weeks to get paid" process, which really sucks. It may seem like a minor detail, but cashflow can be a real problem when you need to buy a development tool or some service, and suddenly you find that you don't have the cash because your clients have been late in paying you.

Also, treat the business process as you would a technology process. Constantly critique your business efforts and try to learn from your mistakes. As obvious as this sounds, a lot of small business people simply don't conduct any form of self-evaluation or process critiquing.

Don't let the naysayers get you down. It takes a lot of courage to go out and start something on your own. There will always be people sitting smug in their salaried positions, ready to sharpshoot you. But they'll never know what it means to put yourself out there on the edge and go for it.

Finally, for the financial and legal matters associated with starting a business, check out Nolo Press. Their books are very thorough and have been extremely helpful to us in negotiating the often frustrating local, state, and federal paperwork shuffle.

Best of luck!

A nitpick: "Probable cause" refers to what must exist for a warrant to be issued by a judge -- it's not mumbo-jumbo that allows a cop to conduct a warrantless search; in the case of the bag of cocaine, the cop never had to search for it, so probable cause never entered into the equation. A cop who starts talking about probable cause may be trying to bully you into letting him search you without a warrant.
There's plenty of stuff on the net about this (like here.)

Ok, maybe 30% is a bit high, but it can't be that far off:

[newsgroups make up] 11.5% of total Internet traffic www.library.ucsb.edu/untangle/mullin.html This was back in 1999? Unknown how much of that traffic was spam.

To get an idea of how much bandwidth is consumed by spam, America Online estimated that one-third of the 30 million daily email messages it transfers is spam., from http://www.nolo.com/lawcenter/ency/article.cfm/obj ectID/A6F26AE8-C831-469E-81157FC4252D98CB

One month's worth of mailings from one of the most nefarious bulk email outfits was estimated at over 134 gigabytes. Each message was sent over the email wires, consuming bandwidth. Then, each message was eitherstored locally or "bounced" back to the sender, taking up storage space and even more bandwidth., from http://www.more.net/security/presentations/spam/sl d005.htm

Hotmail, owned by Microsoft, is, by virtue of its 110 million users, among the world's biggest e-mail providers. It is, therefore, one of the world's biggest spam buckets. The number of messages it gets each day is closing in on two billion. Up to 80% are spam. (Sorry, it's a WSJ article "Hotmail Has Quite a Job to Save Its E-Mail Empire From Spam", from 7/8/2002)

1. Independent Discovery

Anyone who creates the same secret information independently -- even if it is identical to your business' trade secret -- is free to use and disclose that information. In other words, creating a trade secret, by itself, does not grant you exclusive rights to use that secret.

EXAMPLE: Dudely Company and Manly Company sell competing after-shave products. Dudely creates a database that compares different brands of after-shave advertising and resulting annual sales. Dudely uses this trade secret information to determine how to allocate its advertising budget. Manly's president independently creates a similar database and publishes it in a business book. Dudely will be unable to protect its formula under existing NDAs because its database is no longer a trade secret.

To preserve a possible claim of independent discovery, many companies will not look at materials furnished by an outsider who wants to sell something to the company. By refusing to consider unsolicited materials, the company has a better argument for its independent creation of similar products. One method of proving independent creation is to use clean room techniques (see "Clean Rooms" below)

iocat is spot on with this one.

That said, if you are doing contract work already you should aready know. Get thee to Nolo before you get yourself into trouble.

You're 100% wrong.

The only "intellectual property" right you can lose by not defending it is your trademarks, which is part of this suit but not the part you seem to be discussing. Copyright has very strong protections built in.

In fact, things like copyright seem to enjoy better protection than certain physical property rights. Example: if my neighbor starts using part of my yard, and I don't object to this quickly enough, that neighbor could potentially gain title to that part of my yard (neighbor FAQ at nolo.com). Of course, copyrights thoeretically expire at some point, so it does even out.

A straightforward and cheap way to enforce copyright for unrepresented authors is to simply seal a copy of your manuscript in a manila envelope and post it to yourself. The PO will gladly paper-seal the envelope and frank the seal. When you sue in civil court ($20 fee hereabouts, couple hundred for the papers to be served) you bring your still sealed envelope and hand it to the judge. This is not going to be much help if one needs to prove ideas stolen and modified, but is sufficient to get any number of simple rip-offs detained, no matter how expensive the defendant's suits are. Check out the Nolo Press. The law is full of obfuscation and chicanery, but eventually slams up against the truth. A contingent truth, sometimes unjust, often misinformed, but the truth by its lights. You don't need a thousand dollar suit to participate.

What if the responsible managers/employees/corporations are out of business, or broke? What if they deliberately operate close to the bone, to insure that they can't lose much when their violations are discovered?

That's what prison is for. For knowingly causing the death or permanent physical injury of people in an attempt to "maximize stakeholder value", that fits the crime better, anyway.

Btw, an except from a legal dictionary on the word "liable" (being not just financial responsibility):

A person may be liable for a debt, liable for an accident due to careless behavior, liable for failing do something required by a contract or liable for the commission of a crime. Someone who is found liable for an act or ommission must usually pay damages or, if the act was a criminal one, face punishment .

As you don't state whether you are in the U.S. or not, I will assume that you are.

The recommendation regarding an S-corporation is sensible. If you are inclined to go that route, I would, however, advise you to consider a Limited Liability Corporation (LLC). This structure provides less stringent reporting requirements and is considerably easier to set up and run. The statutes of most, if not all, U.S. states allow single-member LLCs.

For more information regarding LLCs, S-corporations, other legal structures, and sundry issues concerning small business, I refer you to the Small Business section of Nolo's Law Center. I can also highly recommend their library of legal self-help books catering to the (prospective) small business owner.

Trademark filings are simple enough to do it yourself. The Nolo Press books on trademarks can be helpful.

Nothing says you have to apply for a patent. But if you invent something that is novel, useful, and non-obvious to one reasonably schooled in the art, and you want to have a chance at taking it to market unmolested, then you'll file a patent on it.

The cost argument doesn't wash: Patents can be had for a few hundred dollars in filing fees. People usually use patent attorneys becuse its easier and quicker, but it's NOT required. In fact, in the US, the USPTO is REQUIRED to assist you in your filing as an individual inventor without counsel. PLEASE read up before you flame: I'd suggest Nolo's excellent book, Patent it Yourself Sadly, most people here on /. just blast away against patents because Stallman doesn't like them, without ever bothering to learn how they work. Stallman's wrong about a lot of things, patents are #2 on the list. (Emacs instead of vi is #1... Now *that's* flamebait!)

I remember a case where once the "squatter" offered to sell the name back to the owner, he lost all right to that name. So by offering the "buy this domain" link, they have forfeited there rights. Look here for more information. See the header "Bad Faith"

Nolo.com has a nice short primer on Internet taxation issues, with plenty of additional links for more breadth.

As this NYT article suggests, the taxation ban expiring will have little effect in the short to medium term, as the ban itself was really very limited in scope, and no local politician wants to increase taxes, especially to affluent voters who would be primarily affected.

Let's personalize it. You've insinuated that I'm smoking something. If I were a prick, I'd call that libelous (actually, if I were a prick, I'd call it slander without knowing the difference) and sue you. Because we're playing by your rules, I get to sue you in the Iowa court system. Hrm...that means (assuming that you don't live near Iowa and that you want to be there to know how the suit's going) that you get to foot the bill not only for the legal expenses you're going to rack up, but also airfare, housing, lost wages, etc...

Check out this site for a plain English review of jurisdictional rules, it's not complete, but it's servicable. The law is supposed to be blind to big guy vs. little guy conflict and the defendent is presumed to be innocent until proved otherwise by the plaintiff/prosecutor.

BTW - In your example, it's unlikely that little Joey would be without a lawyer for very long. Most attorneys would jump at the chance to represent such a client for a percentage of the settlement.

-sk

Note: I've been using the whole rock thing as a metaphor for any actions taken outside a jurisdiction that have an effect within it. A real rock, or Bigcorp's giant catapult assult would constitute a criminal assult and battery. IANAL and I doubt my observations would hold in such a case.

There is a FAQ on Trade Secret Basics at nolo.com. In particular, look at the question titled "What rights does the owner of a trade secret have?" I am not a lawyer, but I think it would be reasonable to assume that the SirCam virus would be covered by the line that talks about "people who learn about a trade secret by accident or mistake" (these people are not allowed to divulge the trade secret). So, I am playing it safe with files sent to me as the result of SirCam and just deleting them.

Nolo Law has a Trade Secret Basics FAQ where I was able to learn a lot. Specifically, they state that the definition has a carve-out for "improper acquisition and theft." -- Meaning I DO think that you would be legally bound to maintain that as a trade secret, just as if you has stolen the documents yourself.

Hold on and read my comment before you flame. I'm behind fair use on this one.

What I think is lacking in current cybersquatting laws is that bad faith squatting is considered only in the case where it has already been shown that the complainant has a prior mark which is infringed upon. link

I think that cybersquatting laws should be extended to any bad faith holding of domain names. Why? Because if you go to register a domain name these days you'll notice that virtually every English word and plenty of common combinations are taken. This wouldn't bother me, except that many of these domains aren't even in use...they've been bought by squatters.

It's simple math...when you can buy in bulk, you can register 428 domains for about $3000. Since the going rate for even crap domains seems to be above this (what is $3k to a company?) even one hit in 400 is a net profit. (example: "dot-diddly-dit-dot.com" is on the block for $99999)

This is terrible, because in its original form the domain name system was available to anyone. With "deregulation" consumers can now purchase domains as cheaply as $10...only problem is, big companies have bought most of the useful ones up, so if you aren't another company with a few Gs in your pocket you can forget about most of the names out there.

Sure, new TLDs addresses the problem. But really, why should one settle for i-friable.com, or friable.info, when the owner (houseofdomains.com) is just sitting on them? Shouldn't they go to someone who can contribute something to the Internet? What is to stop someone with a few million in capital from buying a large swath of useful names in every TLD, and waiting for the cash to roll in? (especially since some registrars are giving businesses the first crack at new names)

Opening the door to any bad-faith challenge certainly opens up a can of worms, but wouldn't it be nice to have a web where sushi.com actually led to a sushi site, and thousands of other dead, unused names were being put to good use and making it easier to find information in the billions of web pages out there?

In order to be cybersquatting, you have to register a domain name for which a prior copyright exists, AND be using it in bad faith.

Just registering names for which you hold a copyright or for which no prior copyright exists and then squatting on them is not legally "cyberquatting".

(In fact the bar is slightly higher than this, if you want to read more)

Actual in the world of Copyright Law, rights that are not specifically granted are usally reserved to the copyright holder.

A fine and noble sentiment, which is completely at variance with the next sentence...

And if they wanna give me some cash for it, I'll gladly take it.

If there is no patent, there is no reason for anyone to give you any cash. It's an idea which can be readily stolen; this is why we have patents.

If you want someone to give you some cash for your idea (which might very well deserve some), go to nolo.com and order a copy of Patent It Yourself. Patent it. Sell your patent to a company that actually makes laptop computers. Congratulate yourself for your productive participation in our fine capitalist society.

Whether the owner of a trademark can stop others from using it depends on such factors as:

• whether the trademark is being used on competing goods or services (goods or services compete if the sale of one is likely to affect the sale of the other)
• whether consumers would likely be confused by the dual use of the trademark, and
• whether the trademark is being used in the same part of the country or is being used on related goods (goods that will likely be noticed by the same customers, even if they don't compete with each other).

Any more questions?

Whether the owner of a trademark can stop others from using it depends on such factors as:

• whether the trademark is being used on competing goods or services (goods or services compete if the sale of one is likely to affect the sale of the other)
• whether consumers would likely be confused by the dual use of the trademark, and
• whether the trademark is being used in the same part of the country or is being used on related goods (goods that will likely be noticed by the same customers, even if they don't compete with each other).

Any more questions?