Legal Question in Intellectual Property in New York

Re: a couple of questions

An offer by one party with an acceptance by another, with what the law calls, "adequate consideration," will form a binding contract. If you offer to let the company hear about your idea/invention and the company agrees to keep it confidential & not use it for their own purposes, you would have a binding agreement. The only time court intervention would be needed is if one of your failed to live up to your side of the bargain -- most likely the company who would breach by either not keeping it confidential or using it for their own purposes w/out adequate compensation to you.

As to obtaining a copyright, it depends upon whether you authored an original work or whether someone else did. If you did, it is "copyrighted" to you automatically; however, if you ever wanted to enforce the copyright in a court of law, you would have to register the copyright w/the United States Copyright Office.

If, on the other hand, you wanted either to purchase the copyright belonging to another or obtain a license to copy an authored piece from another, you would have to contact the copyright owner & negotiate an agreement.

In each of these situations -- the disclosure of your invention/idea to a company and the copyright issue -- rights to intellectual property are at stake. It would likely be wise to have legal counsel in preparing & negotiating these agreements.

-- Kenneth J. Ashman; [email protected]; 156 W. 56th Street, Suite 1902, New York, NY 10019; www.lawyers.com/alo

Re: a couple of questions

If both parties sign the non-disclosure agreement, it is a binding contract. I have to apologize, but I�m not sure what you are referring to when you ask about what form to use for the financial part of the agreement.

Consequently, I have to strongly recommend that you contact an attorney to help you draft any agreement you may need.

As soon as an original work is put in tangible form, it has common law copyright protection. However, to gain a copyright registration (which provides greater protection) for a written work, download the type of application you need from the U.S. Copyright Office homepage

(http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/); fill it out, and then return it to the Copyright Office with copies of your work and the filing fee ... it�s that simple. However, please note that you cannot copyright an idea � only the expression of that idea. Therefore, you cannot copyright the �idea for a new product� which you refer to in your question.

Sarah Klug

Law Office of Sarah Scova Klug

845-471-8106