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Using Microsoft Trademarks

Why is a Trademark Important?

Most business owners do not give a second thought about their trademark. Whether it is a small town bakery or a self-employed handyman, most business owners go on their merry way, completely unconcerned about owning their own trademark.

Sometimes this works out okay. Often times, it works out okay. However, it takes only one major infringer with superior assets to water down one's brand and goodwill and significantly diminish or destroy one's livelihood. For instance, what if you have developed a reputation for good service as a plumber? You charge reasonable rates, don't take advantage of people when they call frantic when their kitchen pipes burst, and always complete your jobs in a timely manner. Now imagine that another outfit starts competing with you, using a similar name and taking your customers, using the years of good service and customer care that you built. With a federal trademark, showing you with the first registration of your name (and precluding the use by anyone of anything confusingly similar), the matter is over before it really begins. If you do not possess such protection, you must rely on state common law protections, which means you are paying for your own lawyer (if federally registered, you can get attorney fees as part of any settlement or resolution), and it is entirely possible that you simply may not win.

Securing your business brand forever is an inexpensive process and is one of the smartest things any entrepreneur can do. If brand did not matter, then Wal-Mart, Microsoft and Panera Bread would not bother registering their company names with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). But guess what? They do, because it does.

The USPTO filing fees are reasonable, and a good trademark attorney can do a common law, federal and state search to ensure that your trade name is registerable.

When you decide whether or not it is worth a few minutes of time and a small amount of money to protect your brand, think of the plumber. The protection is infinite as long as you use the name, and the deterrence effects are greater because any infringer will be responsible for the attorney fees and costs you expend in defending your mark. In today's information economy, common law protections are simply not enough. If you have not yet made the decision to register, another day of delay may only help your competition.

About the Author

This helpful article is provided by Nathan Moore, the proprietor of http://www.mooretrademarks.com and a practicing attorney admitted to the Tennessee bar, the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, and the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

Copyright question: How to use copyrighted font for small business sign?

I want to create a business sign for a small business franchise. However, I want to copyright that name. I understand that a Trademark copyright needs to be done. How can I use copyrighted fonts or get non copyrighted fonts? It seems so hard.
For example: I have used Microsoft office Arial to make my sign, but is not that font owned by microsoft ? How can Kinkos make signs using fonts that are not copyrighted. How to do my sign that has letters ??

Fonts are not copyrighted.

Using Microsoft Trademarks
Sequence UML Diagrams: (Example) Understanding & Creating them using Microsoft Visio

Learn Microsoft Office Excel Using Free or Inexpensive Resources

This article briefly explains the pros and cons of some free or inexpensive resources that can be used to learn Excel and where to find them.

Excel Help: The Excel Help Window can be quickly accessed by pressing the F1 (function) key and Excel Help contains hundreds of on board or online articles that are generally very good.

At the top of the Help Window is a search field into which a key word or words can be entered and Help displays article title links related to the key word(s) entered. However, there's a lot more in Excel Help than you will ever find and knowing which key word(s) to search for may not be obvious. Consequently, searching Help can sometimes be a frustrating experience.

If searching by key words doesn't result in finding an article on the topic you are looking for, or if you don't know which key word(s) to search for, try looking in the Table of Contents. Click on the link in the Help Window of Excel 2003 (or earlier) -- it may be necessary to close Help and press F1 again to see the link -- or click on the Book icon at the top of the Help Window in Excel 2007 (or later) to display the Table of Contents. Then start clicking on relevant topic links.

Excel Courses: Attending an Excel Course can be worthwhile for those who want to learn in a classroom environment or gain a certificate that shows a prospective employer they know how to use Excel, but there are a couple of drawbacks. The first is that Excel Courses can be expensive (unless your employer is paying). The second is that there is much more in Excel than can be covered in a course that runs for a day or couple of days. To investigate Excel courses that are available in your area, enter Excel course or Excel training into the Google or another search engine search field and click on relevant web site entries to see the details.

Excel Tutorials: Tutorials on the Microsoft Office web site are free, very good and can be found by entering Office.Microsoft+training (don't omit the dot) into Google or another search engine. Select from the relevant Microsoft web sites that come up.

There are also many Excel Tutorial videos and pdf files available on the web, some of which are very good and many of which are free. Although most video tutorials demonstrate how to do things in Excel, it is necessary to be online to view them, they are limited in content (one topic only), difficult to look back at something you saw two (or ten) minutes ago, and for anyone with hearing impairment, the spoken commentaries may be hard to follow. Having said that, they obviously suit some people or they wouldn't be there, so Google for Excel tutorial or Excel tutorial+pdf to see what's there.

Excel Books: Books are a great self-education training aid and there's a huge range of hard copy (printed) Excel Books to choose from. There are also a few Excel e-books in pdf format and even a couple written in Excel workbooks.

Being reference books, they don't have to be read from beginning to end like a novel. It's easy to browse through the Table of Contents to find a desired topic (or just to see what's there) and it's easy to look up a key word in the Index. The best thing about books (unlike classroom courses or online tutorials) is that they are in effect a complete Excel tutorial, i.e. they cover just about everything in Excel. They can also be kept close at hand to look up something new or look back to refresh your memory about the intricacies of a previously read topic -- and they're a good resource for finding Excel features you didn't even know existed.

You can write notes in printed books, dog ear or book mark pages you want to refer back to and can delve into any part of a book at any time to look something up. Books in pdf format are similar in layout to printed books, but being e-books they are kept and viewed on your computer. They can be open and referred to as you work in Excel and the word search facility in Adobe Reader is really handy.

Books written in Excel are unique. Being written in Excel they are interactive, with hyperlinks in the Table of Contents that will take you to anywhere in the book. They also have "live" examples of formulas, functions, charts etc and many set-ups for exercises so you can learn by doing, not just by reading. They can also be open on your computer and referred to as you work on your own Excel worksheets and things can be copied from them into your own worksheets.

If you are learning Excel or upgrading your Excel skills and don't have a good Excel book you should get one, and the best place to get one is the Internet. There's a very wide range to choose from and many are under $25.00. To see what's available enter Excel books or Excel book+pdf or "Learn Excel in Excel" (include the quotation marks) into your web browser search field.

Web sites: In addition to the above, there are various web sites that contain free and very useful information about Excel and / or free download files. The best one I know of is the Chip Pearson web site (not related to the author of this article). It has a very good index, contains a wealth of information about Excel and has many free downloads. Google for cpearson orPearson Software Consulting to find it.

There's some interesting information and some very different free Excel files that can be downloaded from the web site of John Walkenbach (a prolific author of Excel books). Google for spreadsheet page to find it. There are also several free Excel files that can be downloaded from my web site (link below). Examining Excel files created by others is a good way to see how some of the features of Excel can be put to use.

Excel Forums: There are some good (free) Excel forums on the web and they are very useful when you have a problem. Basically, an Excel forum is a web site where you can post a question and experienced Excel users (from anywhere in the world) will answer your question. One of the best forums is Excel Forum. Google for Excel forum to find it and others. Posting a question in an Excel forum usually gets a very prompt answer. Forums can also be searched to find topics related to key words.

So there you have it. There are lots of free and inexpensive resources that will help you to learn Excel. Make good use of them -- but remember, there is much in Excel and it will take time to learn to use it to its full potential.

Note: The words Microsoft and Excel are Registered Trademarks of the Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries.

James F. Pearson has 16+ years experience using Excel and is the author of the JP Excel Training Files, a couple of comprehensive and unique books about Excel -- unique because they are written in Excel work books. Visit http://www.jpexceltraining.com/ to download a copy of the JP Excel Training Files or one of the free Excel files that is available from Jim's web site.

 

About the Author

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Using Microsoft Trademarks