Trade secrets protect customer lists, pricing, and processes, but only if you can prove you tried to keep them secret. Here’s what actually counts, and what doesn’t.
The post What Is a Trade Secret? A Small Business Owner’s Guide to Protecting the IP You Didn’t Register Anywhere appeared first on King Patent Law, PLLC.
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If a competitor is selling a knockoff of your product on Amazon with your exact packaging and a different brand name slapped on it, the patent you need is probably not the one you’re thinking of. A design patent protects how something looks. The shape of a bottle. The layout of a label. The distinctive visual identity of a product or its packaging. If your product has a look that customers recognize, a design patent may cover it.
The post Design Patent vs. Utility Patent: Which One Stops Amazon Copycats From Stealing Your Packaging? appeared first on King Patent Law,
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Different AI design tools have wildly different rules about trademark registration. Canva explicitly prohibits it. Midjourney has a revenue threshold. Adobe Firefly offers IP indemnification. Here’s what to know before you file.
The post Can You Trademark a Logo Made with AI? What Business Owners Need to Know appeared first on King Patent Law, PLLC.
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You’ve spent years building an audience under your handle, but here’s the thing nobody tells you: that handle is not a trademark. It’s a license from the platform. And if someone else files a federal trademark registration for your brand name, they can file a complaint and get your handle transferred to them. I break down exactly how this happens, what platform complaint processes actually do (and don’t do), when being in a different industry protects you and when it doesn’t, and the three questions that tell you whether your brand name is genuinely protected right now.
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Today is the part that I think is even more urgent for a lot of people, because it covers something your estate attorney may have never thought about, and your IP attorney may not have either: the digital infrastructure of your business. Your social media accounts. Your website and domain names. Your email list. Your online store. Your digital products. Your podcast. The platforms where your revenue actually comes from.
None of that is in the traditional estate planning conversation. And the legal framework around it is genuinely strange: a mix of platform terms of service, federal computer access law,…
Continue Reading What Happens to Your Social Media, Your Website, and Your Online Business When You Die or Can’t Work?

An operating agreement is a legal contract that governs how your LLC is run. It is the rulebook for your business. It covers things like who owns what percentage, how decisions get made, how profits and losses are distributed, what happens when someone wants to leave, whether you can force someone out and when, what happens if someone dies or is incapacitated, how you bring in new members, and what happens if the business closes.
The post Operating Agreements: The LLC Document That Saves Businesses and Friendships appeared first on King Patent Law, PLLC.
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Your intellectual property is property. Legally, practically, economically, it is an asset, just like your house, your investment accounts, and your business equipment. And like all property, when you die, it has to go somewhere. The difference is in how it works and what it needs to survive.
The post Your Trademark Doesn’t Know You’re Dead. Will It Die With You? appeared first on King Patent Law, PLLC.
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Taylor Swift just filed to register her voice as a trademark. Here’s what that means for creators, and the 8 brand deal contract clauses you need to read before you sign anything. The difference between a reasonable contract and a rights-stripping one often comes down to a handful of clauses that most creators have never had explained to them.
The post Brand Deals From Hell: The AI Clause Even Taylor Swift Is Fighting—And What You Can Do About It appeared first on King Patent Law, PLLC.
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What’s trade dress? If you’re a guitar person, you know which brand is associated with a slanted headstock. If you enjoy vodka, you know which brand is sold in a skull-shaped bottle. If I describe a shoe with a distinctive red lacquered sole that contrasts with the rest of the shoe, you know exactly what brand I’m talking about. How about a tall, narrow drink can with large blue and white rectangles and some red text? Or a fast-food kids’ meal container with two arches on the top?
I didn’t say any of those names. No logo. Just a description…
Continue Reading The Cult of the Copycat: Protecting Your Brand’s Look and Feel with Trade Dress Trademarks

Last November, the Johnny Cash estate sued Coca-Cola for using a tribute singer specifically chosen to sound like the Man in Black, without permission, without a license, without paying a single cent. Sound familiar? It should. Frito-Lay tried the exact same thing with Tom Waits in 1992 and lost two and a half million dollars. Brands have been stealing artists’ voices, content, and identities for decades. And it’s not just celebrities at risk. If you’re a creator signing brand deals, or a business hiring influencers, your contracts may be doing the same thing right now without you realizing it. I’m…
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Here is the AI and privacy issue that is not getting enough attention: AI meeting transcription tools.
Also, there is a federal court decision from earlier this year that has been generating a lot of conversation in legal circles, and a lot of confusion. If you have seen headlines like “court rules AI chats are not privileged” or “your AI conversations can be used against you,” here is the accurate version of what actually happened and what it means for you.
What about your attorney using AI? Here’s what you need to know.
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Continue Reading AI Tools and Attorney-Client Privilege: What the Heppner Decision Means for You

There is a federal court decision from February of this year that every attorney using AI tools in their practice needs to read carefully. Not because of what it held, but because of what it did NOT hold, and because a significant amount of the published commentary about it is mischaracterizing the scope of the ruling in ways that could lead attorneys to draw precisely the wrong conclusions.
The case is United States v. Heppner, decided in the Southern District of New York on February 10, 2026. If you have read any of the dozens of law firm alerts, bar…
Continue Reading Is Your AI Tool Destroying Attorney-Client Privilege? What Every Lawyer Needs to Know

The artificial intelligence tools you are using right now to run your business, to write your marketing copy, design your logo, generate product ideas, create images for your website, and produce your social media content, are raising intellectual property questions that most business owners have not fully thought through yet.
And here is what makes it genuinely spooky: the wrong assumption can cost you your copyright. It can sink your trademark application. It can leave you building a brand on a foundation you do not actually own.
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Continue Reading AI and Your IP: What Every Small Business Owner Actually Needs to Know in 2026