Patent Attorney John Rizvi discusses intellectual property and how the tax code applies to the sale of ideas, plus experienced Construction analyst Shelly Armato discusses the state of construction and the ups and downs of investing in the construction industry.

Episode Transcript

Intro:
Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm.

Disclaimer:
The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation.

Chip Franklin:
Hello. Welcome again to another edition of Practical Tax with Tax Attorney, Steve Moskowitz. Steve, when you think about intellectual property ... It's funny. We were talking with an intelligence officer on one of the last shows we did, and I think about when people talk about intellectual property, it is interesting. If you were to purchase something that was intellectual property, if I wanted to purchase a copyright for somebody, does that have all of the same entanglements of a regular sale when it comes to tax and the federal and state governments?

Steve Moskowitz:
When you talk about tax and you talk about entanglements, the answer is almost always yes.

Chip Franklin:
Okay, fair enough. We'll dive into that a little bit deeper. Our next guest is known as the Patent Professor. He's an adjunct professor of patent law at Nova Southeastern Law School in Florida. He's written two books on patents and John Rizvi is nice enough to join us here for Practical Tax with Steve Moskowitz. Hello, John.

Steve Moskowitz:
Hi, John.

John Rizvi:
Yes, how are you? Pleasure to be here.

Chip Franklin:
Great! I love that you have the Patent Professor and it has a little R on there on it. I tried to find that on my computer one day. On a Mac, you got to hold six buttons down at the same time. But let me ask you, do you have to ... and I've heard this before with, I don't know, copyrights or trademarks or patents ... but when you get it done, you have to let people know that you have a patent on it, right? Or the rights to it can start to slip away. Is that accurate?

John Rizvi:
Yeah, so you have to put people on notice. So patents and trademarks are both different. Briefly, a patent protects an idea, like an invention, and trademarks protect brands. Whereas the patents, you would mark the product with US patent number and you'd have a patent number. With trademarks, and I don't know if this is going to show up well on screen, I have a cup of coffee with me-

Chip Franklin:
Starbucks. We see it.

John Rizvi:
Yep. Everyone is seeing the R with the circle around it on the logo. And I don't know-

Chip Franklin:
Gotcha.

John Rizvi:
[inaudible 00:02:28] knows what I'm talking about. For a trademark, that indicates that it's a registered trademark. Now sometimes, you'll see a TM and a TM is putting people on notice that you're seeking rights to that name, but it's not necessarily been granted yet by the trademark office. It's very important to label and put others on notice. Otherwise ... and there's a lot of advantages ... it eliminates the defense of, "I didn't know that was a trade name." For patent cases, there's a defense of innocent infringement. It doesn't get you off the hook as an infringer, but it at least makes it more difficult for a judge to award punitive damages because it makes it look like it's an accident. But if you have your registered trademark every time you have your brand ... You have it on your sign, your website, your business cards, letterhead ...