Author Archives: mwillee

Dear Arizona, I have lived in your state now for about 10 months. Before that, I would have scratched my head at industry buzzwords like entrepreneurial spirit, evangelist, gamification, accelerator, scalability, thought leaders, etc. Having been working in the startup world for less than a year, I am still fresh to the ways and thinkingContinue reading “How Successful Entrepreneurs Do It Differently”

This is a guest blog by Ian Monat, Owner of Monat Technologies. When the catalytic converter was stolen off his truck he made it his mission to “protect vehicles across the U.S. and U.K. from catalytic converter theft with the best security solutions on the market”: The Catlock.

The world is moving faster than ever and it has become increasingly difficult to keep business secrets, regardless of the continued importance of keeping major pieces of your intellectual property (IP), like trade secrets, secret. So how do you accomplish this?

You don’t often hear about branded hashtags and trademarks going together. But as the hashtag grows more in prominence in pop culture, it seems it’s become a form of intellectual property (IP). Forbes recently pointed out how companies are using them everywhere for branding purposes, including placing hashtags on products as much as they do usingContinue reading “Protecting Your Intellectual Property with Trademarks on Hashtags”

Each year around 300 trade secret cases are heard in state level courts. Additionally, about 25 cases are tried in federal court as a criminal offense. This just goes to show that intellectual property theft is a very real real issue. With that being said, the following three cases have garnered media attention and broughtContinue reading “Intellectual Property Theft and Three Trade Secret Cases”

Tech Digest reported a couple weeks ago on how an iconic video created by Commander Chris Hatfield, a Canadian astronaut who recently flew on the International Space Station (ISS), will have to be taken down due to copyright law. Hatfield had created a music video of himself singing David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” while floating in the ISSContinue reading “Astronaut Space Music Video Caught in Copyright Law”

Last week’s Taking the Scary Out of Startup series discussed culture as a touchstone. Not only do we have wonderful Trakers who support our culture, but we would not be where we are today without our advisors. And just like identifying your intellectual property (IP) and creating your IP strategy, you can never start tooContinue reading “Taking the Scary Out of Startup: Why Startups Succeed, Part 5”

We can’t stress the importance of trademarks enough. If you are not familiar with trademarks, check out “What’s the Big Deal About Trademark Registration,” an article by guest blogger Shane Olafson of Lewis Roca Rothgerber. Taking the time to federally register your intellectual property (IP) is a necessity for effective branding and can help eliminateContinue reading “5 Reasons Every Business Should Have Trademarks”

Every month, Shay discusses some of the technical changes to our site in his Traklight Tech Talks blog. Last month saw clarification of noteworthy software changes with our recent update. And today is the introduction of our latest feature, iframes.

This post, originally appearing February 10, 2014, on America’s SBDC Biz Blog spotlights some examples of entrepreneurs ignoring their intellectual property and the intellectual property lessons learned from those mistakes. We post this as a guide to our readers, whether you are an entrepreneur, startup, or small business owner as lessons to be understood byContinue reading “Intellectual Property Lessons Learned”