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Do You Need to Protect Your Copyrights and Trademarks?

Written on June 24, 2011 – 6:10 am | by Ashley Johnson

Copyrights and trademarks can be a confusing lot for the small business owner. They are considered valuable assets by giant corporations and guarded vehemently.  However, small business owners should do the same. Do you guard your intellectual property properly?

Understanding Copyrights

A copyright is any artistic or creative material that is produced on a tangible medium. For instance, when you write and post a blog article, you have a copyright on those sentences and the way you present that content. No one can steal your blog post and print it elsewhere, or post it on another website.

Likewise, any printed materials, including catalogues, brochures, white papers, and sales letters, all have an inherited copyright that your business owns. Copyrighted material may also include architectural designs, artwork, original computer graphics, photos, music, etc.

The question often arises whether you need to register your copyrighted material with the US Copyright Office.

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Tags: Trademarks

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DTI to designate critical, strategic industries

Written on June 24, 2011 – 2:26 am | by Ashley Johnson

New procurement regulations will empower the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) to designate specific industries of critical or strategic importance, it was revealed on Wednesday. Public sector tenders will also only be considered for locally manufactured products with a prescribed minimum threshold for local content.

Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies said this on Wednesday when presenting his department’s budget vote speech in the National Council of Provinces — Parliament’s higher house.

New government procurement regulations were announced by Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan earlier in June and they are due to come into effect from December 7 this year.

Davies said the DTI was hard at work to ensure that when the new regulations come into effect it would be ready with a number of designations to ensure that as its infrastructure investment programmes advance they will act as a catalyst to local industrial development.

Davies pointed out what he described as pleasing news that manufacturing growth in the first quarter of this year grew at a “pleasing” 4.9% year-on-year, but expressed worry that jobs growth had not kept pace in the sector.

He said the DTI’s policy was centred on the three-year rolling industrial policy action plan, the backbone of which was the manufacturing sector.

Davies said manufacturing remained largely concentrated in three main regional hubs.

“In this regard, there is consensus for the need to regionally diversify manufacturing industries to new economic regions in addition to the current hubs. Read more…

Tags: Industries

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The Stock Photo Debate

Written on June 23, 2011 – 9:49 pm | by Michael Harris

The conundrum continues for many of us business owners. We want to increase our marketing but need to make sure those efforts align with our company philosophies and goals. Unfortunately, that usually means spending more money on creative ads and photography- which leads us to the cheap fix of stock photography.

In the New York Times “You’re the Boss” blog , MP Mueller suggests spending the time to get to the essence of your company, your brand and messages. Get rid of the stock photos on your website of perfect looking people shaking hands across a boardroom table. Instead, use photos that reflect your business’ philosophy and culture.

There are going to be instances when it is easier to buy stock photography that setting up an expensive and time-consuming photo shoot. When using stock photography, make sure you buy from a site that offers “real” shots instead of the perfectly staged shots that have given stock photography a bad name. Check out Bigstock for millions of fast, easy-to-use photographs and illustrations from talented photographers and artists around the globe.

“Wh

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Damages to Joplin Business by EF-5 Tornados, Recovery Comes as SBA Disaster Loan Support

Written on June 23, 2011 – 5:38 am | by Ashley Johnson

The U.S. Small Business Administration announced that it had approved the first disaster loan for economic impact in Joplin Mo. The recipient I3 Technology Group Inc., though did not suffer damage from natural disaster, the firm’s customers were severely impacted or damaged.

It is in-fact, a good first step to secure emergency financing for more than 400 businesses that are affected in Joplin. The SBA that is known to disburse emergency, residential and business loans has by now approved $2.9 million in disaster loans in Jasper County. In case of I3 Technology Group, the loan will keep operations running; the reason being that the firm can continue to offer tech services as the community gets back on its feet.

But returning to back to business-as-usual is not always easy and that gets revealed when chapters of history are opened. In May 2007, Greensburg, Kan. suffered from a category EF-5 tornado. Homes and businesses on Main streets got leveled. Joplin’s tornado also an EF-5 spanned 22 miles and destructed business establishments. The

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Tags: Disaster Loan, Loan

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Number of U.S. tablet owners to double by early 2012: report

Written on June 23, 2011 – 4:48 am | by Ashley Johnson

Despite the hype, tablets are still most accurately described as a ‘niche‘ market. But that market is expected to grow really, really fast.

That’s according to a study (PDF) conducted by the Online Publishers Association (OPA) and Frank N. Magid Associates, which sees 54m Americans owning or using tablets by early 2012, up from 28m today.

Obviously, that’s good news for Apple, which currently dominates the market with the iPad. But it could also be good news for capable publishers with strong multichannel strategies.

In its survey of nearly 2,500 people, the OPA found that 87% of tablet users use their tablets to access content, making consumption of content and information the “dominant activity” for tablets.

Perhaps more important: of the 93% of tablet owners have downloaded apps, 79% of them have paid for an app, and 26% of all app downloads are paid.

That doesn’t mean that tablets are a paid content panacea, however.

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Tags: Tablet, Tablet Owners

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