Creating Fake U.S. Military Organization

Dear Rich: I am working on the third fictional book in a series about a fictional U.S. government counter terrorism organization. I am including considerable fictional events that occur on, and in connection with, an actual U.S. military installation, in which I use the actual name of the installation. I use fictional names for the military personnel at the location, but some of the positions are real, such as the commanding officer, MPs, etc. The stories are not based on any known actual people or events. Do I face any liability for the material in these stories/books which are published on Amazon CreateSpace and Amazon Kindle? Regardless where you publish your books, you won't face any liability. Unless you defame a real person or invade their privacy, or disclose government secrets or trade secrets in violation of an agreement, you shouldn't run into a problem. Good thing, too! Fake counter-terrorism enterprises -- whether they're Rainbow Six or Control -- are a mainstay of American fiction.

Expansion for Board Game

Dear Rich: I read your post "Copyright and Trademark Issues for Expansion Pack for Game," and I have a related question. Rather than creating an expansion which I am trying to sell or market as a separate game from the original, I have created an expansion for a popular board game which is not separate. I am in contact with the company which owns the game, and they are interested in the full details of my expansion. I cannot find any information on how I should protect my ideas, given that they are an expansion to an existing game rather than a stand-alone game. You're in a bit of a Chinese Finger Trap. There's no way you can exploit your idea with the board game (unless you get permission from the board game owner) and there's no way you can exploit your idea by itself (you need the board game). So, we're glad that the board game owners are interested in seeing your idea. That gives us hope that they want to make a deal with you. But, alas, there's no way to guarantee that everything will proceed equitably.
Copyright protection?  Hopefully, you have something proprietary. But whether you can claim copyright in your contribution depends on how "separable" and protectable your work is from the board game. If copyright exists in the expansion, then you'll have a basis for proceeding against the owners if your creative work is hijacked. (You can seek to register your claim to copyright but would need to disclaim anything that pertains to the existing game.)
Secrecy? Ideally, you would get the game owners to sign a nondisclosure, or evaluation agreement. But many toy and game makers are hesitant to sign such agreements, or if they do sign, they often seek to exclude any ideas you have that are similar to ideas they are developing. Worse, they toss out secrecy agreements and ask you to sign a waiver agreement, waiving any obligations to maintain secrecy. In that case, you have to proceed with your own personal radar and determine whether the potential risk (losing your idea) is worth the potential reward (an acquisition or licensing payment for your idea). In general, case law about submitting ideas indicates that the best you can do to shore up your position when submitting an idea is:

• maintain it with secrecy (due to the vagaries of trade secret law, the idea may qualify as secret),
• don’t submit it until the company actively solicits the idea and it is clear that the arrangement is for compensation, and 
• if possible, as mentioned above, use an evaluation (or option) agreement to maintain secrecy and to demonstrate solicitation.

The Prior Art Conundrum: Knock It or Not?

Dear Rich: I've just finished Patent It Yourself. The one point I'm struggling with comes in Chapter 8 (How to Draft the Specification).  I'm finding it difficult to reconcile two ideas: (1) "Don't say what the prior art can't do because this can make your invention or the problem you discovered seem obvious." (2) "...you should, as much as possible, try to "knock the prior art" here in order to make your invention look as good as possible." I appreciate the underlying conundrum (and that it's not of the author's making!), but this is currently my biggest concern. Since the 'non-obvious' requirement is likely to be a bigger hurdle than the 'usefulness' requirement, I'd appreciate an opinion on whether the greater risk here is in calling too much attention to the shortcomings of the prior art (making solutions seem more obvious) or not enough attention to them (making solutions seem less useful). PIY author David Pressman responds, "This is a good question. Here’s a better explanation that I had recently written in response to another person who had seen this dichotomy:

In the PRIOR-ART section don’t mention your invention or suggest any solutions. Never state that any prior art reference doesn’t teach a specific feature of your invention. When you knock the prior art, just state what's generally wrong with it from a novice's standpoint and don’t state that it doesn't have any specific novel feature of your invention. This is because (a) most people would not realize or consider that the lack of a specific feature is a disadvantage, and (b) it can make it seem like the lack of a specific feature was already known in the art and was not discovered by you, the inventor. For example, the right way to indicate this would be to write, "Smith’s system operates slowly." The wrong way would be to state, "Because Smith doesn’t eliminate the reaction waste products, this delays the refining process." 

Do I Register Book of Photos?

Dear Rich: I just created a small, self-published book of photographs to sell. I had previously registered with the Copyright Office all of the photographs in the book. Is there any reason for me to now register the book itself? Unless there's additional material such as text, illustrations, or a forward and you're concerned about someone stealing that, we can't see any reason to register the book of photos. As you may know, registration doesn't establish copyright (that's automatic), but it does provide you with additional benefits in the event that you're chasing an infringer. BTW, here's a video we prepared on how to register a group of photos.

My Partner Patented My Idea!

Dear Rich: While I was in school, I came up with an idea for a product that allows you to get your car back from valet with a text message. I wrote a business proposal and found a partner. My partner started the company and we developed the product. I never signed any employment agreement, we never did any sort of paperwork for ownership of the company (he was a family friend), and he applied for the patent with his name and the company name. All was fine until a disagreement between us led to me leaving the company. Now he refuses to acknowledge my claim to the company (though I have him acknowledging my co-ownership in an email), and his name is on the patent for my idea. Obviously I learned my lesson about getting everything in writing, but do I have any recourse as far as challenging or becoming a co-owner? We're not clear whether your patent was granted or whether you're referring to an application still in progress. We're also not patent lawyers so we can't comment on the novelty or nonobviousness of your text message/valet system. But few applications fly through the patent process, so if a patent has not been granted (and we're not referring to provisional patent applications), we'd suggest that you search the USPTO website to determine where, in the patent food chain, the patent is currently located and to verify that you are not listed as a co-inventor. You need to also assess accurately what your contribution was. The more specific and detailed your contribution the stronger your position. But if all you provided was the one-sentence idea as in the question, above, the weaker your claim to invention co-ownership.
Can you afford the fight? Assuming you have a strong claim, you're going to need a patent attorney in order to validate your claim to co-ownership. (You'll need a patent attorney because you will need someone familiar with the the patent process and with claims such as patent fraud.) It's possible (though not likely), that if you have a really strong financial claim, you can find an attorney who will work on contingency. Before you proceed, consider the financial outcome. You don't want to spend more money on lawyers than you'll earn from your patent.

Wants To License Art for T-Shirt

Dear Rich: My sister and I have a start up apparel company (LLC). We are paying a graphic artist a flat fee to use a piece of his art to print on a t-shirt. The art piece will only be used for one release/collection and we agreed on a flat fee as we don't know if any of these tees will sell or how many we will end up printing. Is there a basic contract for this type of arrangement? There's a long form and short form T-shirt license in our book, Getting Permission. You can also download the short form agreement here.

Music Publishing: Admin v. Co-Publishing

Dear Rich: May I ask for some advice towards various factors that may affect income (including net receipts/at source deals) between administration and co-publishing deal? The biggest factor is the reputation and trustworthiness of the company you're dealing with. If the company doesn't have a rep for timely and accurate payments, it's not worth signing on the dotted line. The second most important factor is you. If you're a songwriter who can pave your own way as a performer and attract attention and deals, then an administration deal is all you need (and will probably be more profitable). If you're a songwriter who needs the muscle of an aggressive song publisher to get your tunes into TV, movies or the hands of other artists, a co-publishing deal (with the right publisher) will generate more income. In either case, the third most important factor is the length of the arrangement. The shorter the time period -- say five years if you can manage it -- the better for you as it allows you to either eject from a potentially unfortunate arrangement, or renew a profitable one. You're more likely to get a short deal with an admin agreement.
Differences ... As you're aware a music publisher is a company that owns and profits from song copyrights. Some music publishers serve solely as "administrators," making sure you're properly registered with performing right societies and collecting revenue. For these tasks of managing your songwriting business they collect a fee, for example, 5 to 25% of your revenues. A co-publishing deal requires that you give up more, including half of the copyright, in the hopes that you'll get more in return. The co-publisher earns 25% to 50% or more of the songwriting arrangement under a convoluted system that's discussed in more detail in our Music Law book. We talk about the differences in a previous entry.