Legal Authority

After sending out several e-mails and receiving no replies, Ryan Gile of Weide and Miller, Limited was the first lawyer I called from my list of lawyers. His secretary answered the phone and I told her I was a student doing a project on intellectual property law and was wondering if there was an attorney available to answer a few questions. She transferred me to Mr. Gile. He was extremely nice and actually specialized in intellectual property law. He had even handled cases that had to do with fashion issues. We spoke about trademark issues that arise within the fashion industry. As a fashion enthusiast, I have always had questions regarding things like trademark and copyright laws and how difficult it was to enforce these laws in such a global market. “Trademark law consists of the legal rules by which businesses protect the names, logos, and other commercial signifiers used to identify their products and services. One of the principal goals of trademark law is to prevent consumers from being confused in the marketplace.” (Patent, Copyright, and Trademark, Stim, Richard, p. 378) He then explained to me that there are differences in the rules for trademark and copyright law. “A copyright gives the owner of a creative work the right to keep others from unauthorized use of the work. Under copyright law, a creative work must meet all of these three criteria to be protected: It must be original. It must be fixed in a tangible medium of expression. It must have at least some creativity- that is, it must be produced by an exercise of human intellect.” (Patent, Copyright, and Trademark, Stim, Richard, p. 196) Mr. Gile was very knowledgeable about all of the issues we discussed and enlightened me on some of the precedents that have been established through some of his own case outcomes.