November 8 is fast approaching, and with it the Intellectual Property day at SIBL, featuring representatives from the United States Patent and Trademark Office. This seems like a good opportunity to recommend one of the Library's best sources for information about trademarks, Stephen Elias and Richard Stim's Nolo book Trademark — Legal Care for Your Business and Product Name.

Highly informative and wonderfully comprehensive, this book takes essentially a soup-to-nuts approach, covering topics starting with how to choose a good, strong, name for your mark. It also thoroughly covers U.S. Federal registration of marks, from searching the USPTO database to an owner's responsibilities and obligations once a registration has been made. And, it explains actions that may need to be taken when instances of infringement arise. Finally, I want to note that it covers two other topics that can be very important — international protection of marks and the relationship of Internet domain names to trademark protection.

You might not have a chance to read this book before SIBL's November 8 event. But I suggest that many who attend will want to read it afterward.

Before I close, I want to mention that SIBL is nearly filled to capacity with pre-registrations for Intellectual Property Day on November 8. If you are interested in attending, please e-mail us at siblreservations@nypl.org as soon as possible and let us know you'd like to attend. We will do our best to accommodate as many folks as possible — including walk-ins that day — but unfortunately do have a space limitation.

We look forward to seeing you on November 8. Download the Intellectual Property Day at SIBL flyer >>