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VIEW FROM THE PODIUMMaking Our MarkAll of us understand why one locks the doors of her automobile after parking it in a lot, why one locks the doors of his home when he goes to work, why one stores a diamond ring that she doesn't wear in a safe-deposit box, and so forth. A more esoteric matter is what one might do to protect what we call "intellectual property." The content of this column is, in fact, my intellectual property. I might not want you to profit from the content of this column, just as I don't want you to profit from the gold bars that I store in my garage. (Alas, there really aren't any gold bars in my garage. In my garage, I actually store boxes containing that much more of my intellectual property, like the research papers that I wrote when I was in graduate school.) The challenge with protecting intellectual property is that, quite unlike the gold bars, I deliberately offer my intellectual property to the public, as when I present it in this newsletter. Then, I essentially want to take it back, so that nobody will reprint it someplace else without my permission. The U. S. Constitution acknowledges a person's right to profit from her intellectual property. Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 empowers the U. S. Congress "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." This constitutional provision is the basis for the national government's issuance of patents, copyrights, trademarks, and service marks. Intellectual property can be extremely valuable. Warner/Chappell Music, Inc., a division of the Warner Music Group, currently owns the copyright to the familiar song "Happy Birthday to You," and collects a royalty for every public performance of it. In any given year, the royalties add up to a few million dollars. Two years ago, Forbes magazine said that the most valuable trademark is Google's. Forbes reported the value of the trademark to be $44.3 billion. Some sources now suggest that the value of the trademark of computer maker Apple, Inc., has surpassed that of Google. Pi Gamma Mu wants our brand to be protected as our intellectual property, too. Accordingly, on November 16, 2012, we submitted an application to the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), a component of the Department of Commerce, for a service mark covering our name and logo. The USPTO officially registered our service mark on November 19, 2013, after a multi-step process that was facilitated by one of the USPTO's examining attorneys, Michele-Lynn Swain, whose service to our honor society (as well as to the rest of the public) we gratefully acknowledge. Our U. S. Registration Number is 4,435,110. Several versions of our "visual identity" appear on Pi Gamma Mu's Web site. We have a "Graphics" Web page at http://www.pigammamu.org/graphics.html. Our policy on the use of our name and logo appears on that Web page. It says:
As the statement suggests, we do not want to inhibit our chapters and members from using our name and logo for legitimate purposes. Others will just have to come across with a royalty payment, and, as you can undoubtedly imagine, Pi Gamma Mu's intellectual property doesn't come cheap. It may not be worth $44.3 billion now. But just remember that John D. Rockefeller started out as a 50-cents-a-day bookkeeper, and the rest, as they say, is history. Barry D. Friedman
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