A trademark protects the words, names, logos, and slogans that distinguish your products or services from a competitor’s. Registering with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office gives you nationwide protection against confusingly similar marks, which is often a growing brand’s first and most important line of defense. Without registration, your rights are generally limited to the specific geographic area where you actually use the mark—meaning a competitor could register the same name in another state and box you out of expanding there. Registration also gives you standing to demand takedowns of infringing listings, impersonating accounts, and copycat products far more quickly than an unregistered mark allows. Bass PLLC registers and enforces trademarks for clients across Colorado, New York, D.C., New Mexico, and Wyoming.

Copyright protects original works of authorship the moment they exist in tangible form, so website content, marketing materials, software code, photography, and product designs are all automatically protected as soon as you create them. What registration adds is enforcement power: you generally cannot file an infringement lawsuit until the work is registered with the U.S. Copyright Office, and registering early—before infringement happens—unlocks statutory damages and attorney’s fees that make a lawsuit far easier to bring. Without timely registration, you may be limited to proving actual damages, which are often difficult and expensive to establish. That gap is why businesses that create valuable content regularly benefit from a standing registration practice rather than registering only after a dispute arises. Bass PLLC advises clients on what to register, when, and how to build enforcement leverage before an infringement problem ever surfaces.

There are two different types of patents, utility patents and design patents. A utility patent, which is what most people think of when they hear the word “patent,” protects how an invention is made or used, while a design patent protects how a product looks. Both require a detailed application to the USPTO, and unlike trademarks and copyrights, both expire after a fixed term rather than lasting indefinitely. Choosing the wrong type, or filing only one when both apply, is a common and costly mistake — a product's novel mechanism and its distinctive appearance are often separately patentable and require separate protection strategies. Getting this wrong can mean a competitor lawfully copies the part of your product you assumed was covered. Bass PLLC helps clients determine which type of patent protection fits their invention, and coordinates with patent counsel* where a full utility application is warranted

No, and that is precisely what makes a trade secret different from every other form of IP. A trade secret protects confidential business information that derives its value from not being publicly known, such as formulas, customer lists, pricing models, or manufacturing processes, and it is never registered with any government agency. Instead, protection depends entirely on the business taking reasonable steps to keep the information confidential—non-disclosure agreements, access restrictions, and clear internal confidentiality policies. Skip those steps and a court may find the information was never truly a trade secret at all, no matter how valuable it was to your business. Bass PLLC helps businesses put those reasonable-steps protections in place before a trade secret walks out the door, and pursues misappropriation claims when it already has.

A non-compete alone often cannot—but paired with a well-drafted non-disclosure agreement, it substantially strengthens your position. Restrictive covenants, including non-compete, non-solicitation, and non-disclosure agreements, are not IP themselves, but they are one of the most effective tools for protecting it, keeping departing employees from taking trade secrets, client relationships, or confidential know-how to a competitor. Enforceability varies significantly by state: Colorado, for example, narrowly limits non-competes under C.R.S. § 8-2-113 and penalizes employers who attempt to enforce invalid agreements, which means a boilerplate agreement copied from another state or an out-of-date template can be not just unenforceable but a liability. Businesses operating across multiple jurisdictions need agreements tailored to where their employees actually work, not a one-size-fits-all template. Bass PLLC is admitted to practice in Colorado, New York, D.C., Wyoming, and New Mexico, and prepares agreements specific to each state’s requirements.

No, and this is the most common misconception about intellectual property. IP is a right to exclude others from using your patent, copyright, trademark, or trade secret without permission; it is not a right to act, and owning your own IP does not automatically clear you to use it. A company that patents an improvement to an existing machine, for example, does not automatically gain the right to manufacture and sell that improved machine—if the underlying machine is still covered by someone else's patent, a license from that patent holder may be required first. The same logic applies to trademarks and copyrights: owning a mark stops competitors from using a confusingly similar name, but does not clear you to use that name if it infringes someone else's mark, and owning a copyright in a remix or derivative work does not excuse licensing the original material it is built on. Missing this distinction is how businesses launch a product, a brand, or a campaign straight into an infringement lawsuit they never saw coming. Bass PLLC advises clients on potential IP obstacles before they launch, reducing the risk of an expensive dispute down the road.