intellectual property

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blog series tag - Navigating Life Sciences Transactions

This post is the third in our five-part series, Navigating Life Sciences Transactions, where our team of attorneys provides essential strategies and insights for successful life sciences transactions.

With the SXSW Health and MedTech conference in full swing, it’s a good time to reflect on some fundamental Intellectual Property (IP) strategies that can help safeguard your Life Sciences and MedTech business and maximize its value now and into the future.

IP is often one of the most valuable assets a company can own. Whether you’re preparing to sell a business, enter into a joint venture, or acquire another company, understanding the scope of your IP portfolio is essential. For in-house counsel, founders, corporate executives, and other legal professionals, navigating the complexities of IP ownership and licensing can make or break a deal.

An entrepreneurial company may face an early decision as to how it can afford to develop new technology, particularly new technology that does not fit within the technical specialties of that entity. Whether a new company needs to develop a new website, new software, or a compatible piece of technology, that company might consider entering into a contractual alliance with another party to develop that technology.

Healthcare is a highly competitive market. Healthcare companies are hiring marketing teams to lure customers to their facility. This will invariably require making statements regarding the quality of your services and how your services are better than your competitors. Problems will arise if these ads cause patients or their families to expect more than what is or even can be offered. There are many scenarios that could result in claims of false advertising under §43(a) of the Lanham Act. In addition, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Council of Better Business Bureaus have guidelines for what companies may include within their marketing programs. Today, however, we will be looking at “puffery.”

In one of our first posts, we discussed the five categories of trademarks (Generic – Descriptive – Suggestive – Arbitrary – Fanciful) and how a mark became more protectable as it moved up the line. Laudatory trademarks, trademarks that attribute a quality or excellence to the goods or services, are often included in this list as “descriptive marks” requiring a showing of secondary meaning to be protectable. However, it has been recognized that some laudatory marks do not describe any feature of the product it is used with, but rather suggest that the product is of high quality or “better” quality than other similar products. In these cases, the laudatory composite mark may be considered to be suggestive.

This week we are discussing ways you can use a third party’s mark to identify the third party’s goods or services while also advertising your own. For example, a dental office wants to let potential patients know that it uses a specific brand of dental veneers. The law allows XYZ Dental to factually state:

“XYZ Dental specializes in the fitting and application of ABC® brand veneers.”

This type of use is known as nominative fair use and as with comparative advertising and descriptive fair use, there are rules that need to be followed.

We have talked about why it is important to use your trademark consistently. The easiest way to be sure that everyone in your organization knows the proper way to use the company’s trademarks is to create and distribute a trademark usage manual. The trademark usage manual should include easy to follow guidelines setting out that the mark is to be used as an adjective and not a noun, as well as the proper font, colors etc. that should be used to depict the mark. The usage manual does not need to be a complex or confusing document. It should be a straightforward listing of the acceptable ways that the company’s trademark should be used.