Reasoning of the Law

When conducting my mini-interviews with the IP lawyers, who would allow me to record their answers, I found there was a lot of gray area in the world of IP law.  Most of my questions came back with, “Well, it depends”.  Many of the IP lawyers required me to elaborate and expound upon various scenarios or a particular situations, before they could come to some resolve on how to answer.  I found that the logic behind their answers were direct results of tried cases and personal experience with the laws that foster trademark and copyright litigation.

               

The gray areas in IP law seem to stem from all the various loopholes and tried law suits that have been ruled, overturned, and/or amended over the years due to changes to the policies and regulations.

Save for blatant infringement, there are several scenarios that weave in and out of the black and the red.  Patent licensing comes to mind, with this delicate dance.  As it stands, patent licensing is a "binding agreement in which a patent owner grants another party the sole right to make, use, and/or sell another invention”(Stim, pg.80).  In my instance, I use hardware and notions from fabric stores, to make my handbags, so licensing becomes a potential issue and essentially complicated.  So much so, that the IP lawyer I spoke to specifically about this scenario, had to ask additional questions; such as, am I selling this handbag with a label (trademarked brand name)? Or is this just one of its kind? Am I selling multiples of this same handbag? Do I have a contract agreement with the manufacturers? All of which were questions that were used to drill down to the heart of the legal issue concerning licensing.  Ultimately, I found that I would have to find a producer to make hardware just for my brand, in order to put my label on it and sell that handbag, otherwise, store bought notions and hardware are just licensed for a one time, personal use and not for mass distribution.