Inside Asian Gaming

JUNE 2015 inside asian gaming 35 own trademarks. We had to issue cease and desist letters to a large number of businesses, many small, some (surprisingly) quite large, and one international in scale. HELPING HAND As these examples show, legal issues are intruding into more and more aspects of everyday marketing. Therefore, it’s important that you know the basics and that you partner with a legal professional specializing in intellectual property to help guide your way as you navigate some tricky areas that can become more a matter of interpretation than black and white rules. I’ve been lucky to work with some talented folks in this area. So I reached out to Abigayle Farris of Stone Pigman Walter Wittman in New Orleans, to help answer some questions and offer some advice. She’s a former casino marketer and is now practicing law, so she has lived both sides of this issue. Here are some excerpts from her responses: What’s the difference between a copyright, a trademark and a patent? Ms Farris: A copyright protects original, creative works of authorship that have been expressed in a tangible medium. Copyright arises automatically when the tangible expression is created. Thus, when you write a poem, take a photograph, paint a portrait, or write or record a song, that artistic or creative work is automatically protected by copyright—upon the creation of the tangible expression—even if you never register the copyright. Copyright owners are granted a number of exclusive rights to their protective works, including the right to control reproduction, public performance and derivative works. This is one of the biggest considerations when creating advertising, especially advertising that contains music. A trademark, on the other hand, is a word, phrase or design used to identify and distinguish the source of a product to the purchasing public. Similarly, a service mark identifies and distinguishes for consumers the source of a service. Thus, I find it helpful, if overly simplistic, to think of copyright as the protection afforded an artistic creation—protecting art for the artist’s sake, if you will—while trademark protection is available for product names, logos and other symbols used to signify the manufacturer, developer, brand or source of items offered for sale. Whether a trademark has been registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office or not, the owner of the mark acquires trademark rights upon the first use of the mark in commerce (typically offering the product for sale to the public with its trademark displayed). Once you decide to name something or use a clever spin on an existing name, it’s important to search multiple databases… not simply a Google search. A patent is an exclusive, limited-duration property right in an invention. Anyone who invents an entirely new and “non-obvious” product or process may apply to the Patent and Trademark Office for a patent, which will “exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention throughout the United States or importing the invention into the United States” for up to 20 years. We all interact with patented products every day in our personal lives—the prescription you took with breakfast this morning, the retractable leash you used for your best friend’s daily walk and the smartphone you are using to read this article, likely, are all protected by patents. In your professional life as a casino marketer, you will probably not deal with patents very frequently, but there are certain processes that may be patented. Again, as you cleverly take a spin at something you’ve seen as a success, it is important to dig into possible considerations. How does this impact daily marketing decisions? As discussed above, you probably won’t often be faced with decisions related to a patent. Unless you are in a position to protect patents held by your company, patents probably aren’t something you, as a casino marketer, will have to deal with regularly. Issues related to copyrights and trademarks, however, could pop up every day. Every time you ask your agency or creative director to create a new billboard, direct mail piece, television spot, or any marketing communication piece, you have to think about copyright. And, you may need to think about it at several different levels. Unless you or someone on your staff build your ads and collateral from scratch, someone else could hold the copyright not only to the finished creative, but to every copyrightable component used in it as well. Before you can safely use copyrighted photos, copy, recordings, illustrations and video, you must first get permission from the holder of the copyright. You will also be faced with trademark issues regularly. First and Legal Matters You will also be faced with trademark issues regularly. First and foremost, you should work vigilantly to protect your company’s own marks. Brands, and the marks that identify them, are valuable business assets.