There are many types of brokerage services available. Even the average investor will use a broker to handle his stock market transactions. Some brokers will even give advice about which stocks to buy and sell based on their market trend research.

Obviously these tips are not free. In fact, full service brokers will charge the highest commission rate in the industry. Your choice of broker should depend upon your knowledge of the stock market and how regularly you trade.

Going to “discount brokers” will help you save on commission fees while still using a brokerage. The commission rates are so low because these brokers do not offer advice or analysis. Using a discount broker is perfect for investors that like to make their own trading decisions.

The cheapest brokerages will be online companies. Some of these operate exclusively online, so it helps them offer you lower rates. Some full-service and discount brokers even offer discounts for placing orders online. The process is the same, regardless of which broker you choose. The first step is opening an account. You need to be familiar with all the fine print and understand all the fees involved.

Typically, you are required to maintain a certain account balance, which varies from broker to broker. Some brokers charge when your account balance falls below the minimum. Others charge an annual maintenance fee regardless of the balance.

There are two types of brokerage accounts, and the one you choose depends upon your goals. “Cash accounts” offer no credit. So when you purchase stock, you are paying the full amount of the stock price. On the other hand, the “margin account” allows you to buy stock “on margin.

Margin fluctuates between brokers, but it always has to be protected by the value of the client’s portfolio. Unfortunately, if the portfolio falls between a certain amount, the investor would have to add more funds or sell some stock. These margin accounts are desirable because they allow people to buy more stock with less cash. This creates great gains but unfortunately greater losses, as well. Obviously, these margin accounts can be extremely risky, so they are not recommended for inexperienced traders.

The broker that you choose depends on your needs as an investor. Specifically, it depends on if the investor wants to receive advice about stock to purchase and whether or not the investor is comfortable making trades on the Internet. If the investor is nervous about trading, going with a full-service broker would make it much easier. Otherwise, if you are technology savvy and have the knowledge and confidence in your stock trading, a discount broker will surely save you money.

Make sure to compare a few competitors after you choose. There can even be significant cost differences between the same type of broker. You also need to make some final decisions on your account. After you choose a brokerage type, it is important to shop competitors of a few brokerage firms. But first you need to gather some information to take them. You need to estimate how often you will be trading and how much cash you will deposit into your account. You also need to decide between a cash account and a margin account. Deciding on all of this information early will allow you to accurately compare competitor’s pricing.

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Personal Finance Advisers come in different varieties. There are three types at the moment, with the prospect of a fourth on the horizon.

The main categories of financial advice are:

Direct Sales People

These advisers are directly employed by the organisation which provides the financial product or products. They have to be qualified personal finance advisers, but can only sell you products offered by their employer. This is the type of adviser you are most likely to encounter if you wander into a high street bank or one of the biggest building societies looking for help, or call up a big-name insurer direct.

Tied Agents

These advisers work for themselves or for a firm, selling a limited range of products. They agree to tie no one organisation and sell only the products of that firm. They may be able to link to a second or third firm where their main tied company does not operate in that part of the market.

For example, they may have a main tie covering life insurance, pensions and investments, and subsidiary ties for income replacement insurance and private medical insurance. Again tied agents have to be qualified but cone only advice on and sell you the product of the organisation they are tied to.

Independent Financial Advisers

These personal finance advisers, commonly known IFAs, are free to advice on products from across the market. They can pick and choose from the best providers for pensions, different companies for Isas and other firms for life or health insurance.

In theory an IFA can review the whole market before recommending a product to you. In practise, most have their regular favourites for particular types of business, a list which changes gradually from year to year.

There is a fourth type of personal finance adviser poised to shake up the market. At the time of writing, the British government was starting to relax the rules that say advisers have to be either tied or independent. It thinks there is room for a new category of adviser: one with multiple ties. That is, the adviser might sign up to sell on behalf of five or six different pension companies and do deals with ten different investment houses.

Initially, such multi-ties would only be permitted on supposedly simple products, such as stakeholder pension. In time, the rules might be relaxed further. IFAs do not like the idea. They fear it will lead to more confusion, self-invested personal pensions or an income drawdown scheme, an independent adviser is therefore essential.

Always look at all your family and personal finance circumstances before signing up for a policy. If you don’t really need it, then don’t buy it. The monthly premiums could be used to help build up an investment nest-egg.

Here, on our website, you will find accurate information on over 300 credit cards, plus loans, insurance and mortgage deals for efficient personal finance management.

Over the years, the number of foreigners entering the country has significantly increased. As many sources state, the reason for the influx of immigrants to the US is attributed to more work opportunities and better sources of income for professionals. However, getting permission to work in the US is not a simple process, as there are legal issues regarding foreign employees. At the same time, certain benefits like medical assistance and education will not be available if a foreigner is not recognized as a US immigrant or permanent resident.

With all these concerns in mind, help from a reliable immigration lawyer is needed. Issues regarding citizenship and immigration may take a long time to be resolved if a professional such as an immigration lawyer is not around. The lawyer’s duty is to make the process easy for you to understand. At the same time, the lawyer provides information such as forms, submission procedures, and the like, so that you are well-guided about the proper methods for filing petitions, whether it is for a visa or a green card.

In some cases wherein a foreign employee is not assisted by his or her company regarding his petition for working visa, the immigration lawyer will represent the client, and ensure that he or she gets the paperwork and attention he deserves. With issues regarding marriage to a  US citizen, these lawyers also assist the foreign spouses with their applications. The immigration lawyer is also very helpful in case you are not getting quick responses regarding applications you have filed a long time ago. Usually, immigration lawyers have connections with concerned agencies to help speed up the process for you. With an experienced and reliable immigration attorney, you can be assured that your files are in good hands, and you won’t fret about getting denied because of improperly completed forms.

Secure Online Use of Credit Card

Sending vital information, most especially your credit card information can be dangerous. Here are tipz on how to securely use your credit card if you are making payments online:

Ask your bank if they can provide a special credit card for online use. They have extra security features such as recipient verification and text conformation.

Make sure that the website you are visiting is a secure one. A link that begins with “https://” is secure.

Explore other methods of payment such as using intermediary services like PayPal or Xoom.

Never send your credit card number by email. Emails can be searchable for key words. Besides, bank and credit card companies never ask customers to respond to email communication or a link sent via email. If you have doubts about the credibility of an email sent to you supposedly by your bank or credit card company, you can always call them for verification.

Check your credit card statements carefully so you can inform your bank of questionable transactions. Suspend or deactivate your credit card to prevent further fraudulent use.

Always clean your Internet browser’s cache and cookies. Close out or sign out completely after every transaction, especially if you are using a not-so-secure connection.

Understanding the headaches and frustration massive insurance agents suffer by cold calling people day in an out after paying for worn out insurance leads.

I am compelled to write this article about Internet Leads, Life Insurance Leads, Health Insurance Leads, Homeowners Insurance Leads, etc. and why it has been a huge waste of money and time for the majority of insurance brokers and agents in the insurance industry. I am grateful for such a great resource like EzineArticles which is a powerful tool in communication to the masses!

Agents all over the United States are constantly bombarded with solicitations daily with new lead programs from many different insurance lead providers. I have a friend who is an insurance agent and owes her insurance company money for insurance leads. She is required to buy a certain portion of leads on a monthly basis.

Feeling the pressure from your own insurance boss to close more deals i call this The Greatest Scam of all Times when it comes to (Internet Insurance Leads). Internet leads or leads generated by companies online are about 90% frivolous = trash. The great big lie that we only share these leads with one other insurance company, but when you eventually call, the bottom line is that 5 to 7 others called before you. Wolves in Sheep clothing is what i call these camouflaged as exclusive leads.

Decent insurance leads come to light about once every 20-25 leads. That is a minimum of $350 to run into that decent lead. This does not include the greatest expense, labor and time spent on19 to 25 other leads that did not pan out. This can be burdening on the insurance agent who is not good at closing and has issues dealing with rejection. After calling so many insurance leads and getting the big NO I AM NOT INTERESTED, and the agent apologizing to maintain his integrity, after saying sorry so many times, they begin to feel sorry.

So what specifically these insurance lead generating companies are doing wrong? What is happening with the conversion rates? As you continue to read i will disclose some hidden secrets.

Would you like to know the insurance lead generating companies that are literally giving insurance brokers and agents tons of garbage no good leads? if you do a query on google, msn, yahoo and many other search engines, you’ll find that a vast majority of them dominate top rankings in these search engines for terms like heath insurance leads, mortgage leads, life insurance leads and more.

One way these major companies generate leads is buying these positions on the search engines with (PPC) pay per click advertising. Many companies invest aggressively in search engine optimization to technically dominate good positioning on search engines (Organic Listings). Paying several web masters to aggressively design lead capture pages to generate leads is also a tool used once they are dominating top search engine rankings. Mind you a good portion of them do not know much about the Insurance Business, but generating the leads, they master it!

If you have a hefty budget to invest on (PPC) Pay Per Click, companies like Google Adwords will place your insurance website at the very top almost immediately as long as your a good bidder above other pay per click participants. The average cost per click on Google Adwords for the keyword 9life insurance) is between $18-24 per click with no guarantees! of any conversions.

These big lead generating companies will then sell the leads to brokers or insurance companies that funnel these leads to their brokers at a fraction of the cost, but multiplied many times over, so their investment brings in a big and chunky (ROI). So how does it happen? Well, everybody down the line will pay $15-20 a piece, So what was a $20 investment initially is multiplied by 10 = $200! And who gets the real headache? The client by 7-10 agents calling them and giving them a speech on why they are the best, then they outbid each other.

As many companies use various ways to generate these leads, there are several tactics, sometimes suspicious, sometimes legal and sometimes straight bogus, but that is another story!

Using natural search results, which are found further down the pay per click links, about 3 links lower on the organic section. If you do a search on google typing in (life insurance quote). Usually the first 3 sites are pay per click advertisements, below you will find the natural search results. Major search engines have been weeding out the Spam, but there is a good portion that persist and most likely continue to Spam as long as SEO (search engine optimization) professionals are getting paid!, the job will get done.

These lead generating sources get to the top of natural search engine listings without knowing much about insurance policies – but hiring experts who master SEO (search engine optimization), link building or link exchange and all the technical ways to gain prominent positioning.

Companies are also lead brokers, another bogus way many websites are accumulating these leads to sell to the masses is from other websites. Websites that have prime positioning and get good amounts of traffic easily will cut a deal with companies and become (commission affiliate brokers) that sell leads at wholesale prices. Why are these leads bogus? Because they generate leads by spamming, hacking and buying dead lead lists to redirect them to the affiliate sites and the list goes on, doing whatever it takes to generate leads.

At least a tenth of these websites that dominated search engines for any given term do not know much about insurance, nor do they have content that provides value for the consumer!

Other common problems with insurance leads that are generated are screening issues and pre-qualifications, but most companies will boast that they have screened clients very well, which, after speaking with insurance agents and brokers, their experience claims it not being true!. Speaking with insurance agents and brokers doing research, i found that approximately 85-90% of the leads from these Internet Lead Companies left false contact information, they really were not interested in an insurance policy, all they wanted was a price figure for comparison purposes, or would submit their information only to say (sorry, it’s just too much money for me right now) when the policy came in (per requested!). Here you see alot of wasted manpower. Even companies that have an effective follow-up system, with the most aggressive rates in the industry, dedicated assistants and staff members, technological and underwriting resources at their fingertips – even this makes it a complex lead program to work.

So where is the Insurance Industry headed and what will come of all this? Fact!, People are shopping online daily. They go to these insurance lead generating websites, fill the application, and next thing you know an agent calls them with hopes of closing a deal. Now, the client has numbers that was quoted to them. However, that Insurance Agent RARELY gets a chance at closing a deal. Now the Insurance Agent is chasing a lead and is focused on a misconception. If the client is truly interested in opening up a new policy, now using those quotes goes back to his existing insurance agent, finds one online locally or calls up a friend or family member and discusses theses numbers which in return get refereed to a trusted local insurance agent by word of mouth recommendation.

So there you go! Insurance is usually sold by word of mouth recommendation from trusted associate resources, friends and family members. It initially cannot be sold via the Internet, but using this reliable resource for local insurance companies is vital to their business. If you have an insurance business and your website is not positioned where your local consumers are seeking out information, then you are subject to other insurance agencies intercepting your local leads. Now it balls down to closing skills and providing useful value and great quotes to have the client determine whether or not you are a reliable firm or agent to do business with.

Insurance companies easily say that their best foot forward is implemented in acquiring good solid leads with the best intentions, therefore the leads they provide are well worth the money and if any bad leads exist, they will either refund your money or replace them.

Unfortunately these lead generating companies blame insurance brokers and agents for not having the proper ability to provide quality information with enough value that will lead the consumer to closing themselves, nor have the competitiveness that these online insurance companies show them when quoted for an insurance policy. Most of the time they refuse or make an excuse to why they will not credit you, because there was or is (enough contact information provided to you) which most of the time never gets a response from the client.

This is a challenge for most insurance companies purchasing these leads. If you have 8-10 agents calling the same client, now it IS time to compete and when this happens, fraudulent quoting becomes a common denominator due to competitiveness among insurance agents. Many insurance agents will say anything in order to get that person to walk in the office, sign a deal or outbid another quote. When this happens it leads to unattainable premiums and false claims based upon a clients true rating! Too many variables such as A+, underwriting issues or backdating all play a part in a true quote for a client, so there is a big loop hole in luring the client to fill in the application which ultimately harbors corruption. When the smoke clears and months have gone by, the client is more likely to take the policy because at this point he/she is exhausted and overwhelmed with waiting, they just want it to end it. Bottom line, the lowest pricing usually closes the deal, not the insurance agent who gives the accurate quotes.

This is very unfortunate for many honest and ethical insurance agents who strive to provide the best value. However, the solution to this is in assuring your positioning on the internet with top search engine rankings and be in the way when your consumers search for information concerning insurance quotes. Who better to find than the local insurance company in the neighborhood.

Are you still thinking about buying leads online? Think again!

If you are a broker and your insurance agency has slowed down, and agents have left you slowly but surely, i have a question for you! What kind of search engine rankings does your website have?

If you are a (Broker or Agent) and you are looking for Quality Insurance Leads that call you direct, i recommend you start using Web 3.0 platforms like YouTube, Myspace, Facebook ect. to initially have some immediate viral exposure and work on getting your website to the top of search engines where your potential clients are digging for your information.

http://www.webseospecialistinnyc.com/

http://webseospecialistinnyc.blogspot.com/

Intellectual Property Audit Breakdown

An intellectual property audit breaks down into nine areas that the intellectual property attorney should examine: patents, contracts with independent contractors, employment contracts, trademarks, licenses, trade secrets, copyrights including organization handbooks, training, and inventions. Each area has its own requirements that must be monitored through an audit.
The attorney should first notify everyone who may be involved that the audit is about to take place. She then interviews the technical, legal, managerial, and human resources people to collect information on “…licenses, research and development reports, employee and contractor confidentiality and assignment agreements, and employee invention disclosure statements.” Based on the information thus obtained, she then documents the status of the organization’s intellectual property.
Inventions

Inventions are the first step in the development of potentially very valuable intellectual property. The attorney performing the audit should determine whether the organization is even aware of all the inventive activity carried out within its walls. Does the organization “harvest” its inventions (i.e., require disclosure of inventions and review disclosed inventions for patentability)? Is there an inventor incentive program in place? Does the organization monitor its employees’ inventive activity in other ways, such as having the in-house counsel “manage by meandering,” that is, walk through the laboratories and other workspaces of the potential inventors and talk with them? The attorney performing the intellectual property audit should identify any weaknesses in the organization’s “harvesting” of inventions and bring them to the attention of management at a level where they can be addressed.
Patents

Once an invention is disclosed, the organization must determine whether to obtain a patent on it, and in which country or countries a patent would be most valuable to the organization. Obtaining patent protection requires that the organization be aware of new innovations that occur in the research and development process.
In the United States, the patent law is set forth in Section 35 of the United States Code. That law provides that an invention must be of patentable subject matter, original, novel and nonobvious to be eligible for patent protection. “Patentable subject matter” is defined in the code as “processes, machines, manufactures, and compositions of matter.”
The attorney determines whether the organization’s R&D staff maintains proper records of new developments that are reviewed and witnessed at regular and frequent intervals, thereby providing documentation for patentability determinations, and whether the organization observes the statutory time limits for patenting new inventions. If, for example, the invention is made public more than one year before the organization applies for a patent, the organization is barred from obtaining a patent on the invention.
The attorney also examines the organization’s treatment of others’ patent rights: does the organization monitor itself in the light of others’ patents to reduce the potential for infringing activity? Does the organization routinely seek a patent opinion when there is the potential for infringing another’s patent before they begin any potentially infringing activity?
Contracts in General

Each contract that an organization enters into with regard to its intellectual capital must contain many elements, and parts of each contract must be individually negotiated.
Contracts, however, are expressed in language, and language is inherently prone to uncertainty in its interpretation, especially in cases where the contract’s drafter had little or no part in the negotiation of the agreement. The drafter’s job is to “…record exactly the transaction that the parties wish to undertake.” However, the probability of achieving absolute certainty in drafting any agreement is essentially zero; it cannot be done. Definitions of terms in the contract invariably use undefined terms, and those undefined terms are often not definable. Therefore, even in the best scenario where a contract contains definitions for all its terms, the parties must still look to the judge for the reading of the contract, and then must interpret the judge’s reading, and the judge cannot consider all of the evidence surrounding the contract under the parol evidence rule. Even precise contracts are therefore remarkably imprecise.
However, even under the parol evidence rule, “[a] dispute over [an] alleged conversation that resulted in the oral license [cannot be offered into evidence under the parol evidence rule but] may be resolved by proof of partial performance…. Absent other complicating facts or application of the Statute of Frauds, a court could infer from such partial performance the scope of the license,…the consideration,…and the term….”
The auditing attorney may examine the license agreements and strategic alliances between the client and another organization to be sure that the agreements cover trade secrecy for the client, appropriately license any trademarks or patents, and are to the client’s advantage (or at least not to the client’s disadvantage).
Employment Contracts

Independent Contractors

By definition, independent contractors pose a conflict for protecting an organization’s intellectual assets. Independent contractors are generally experts in a particular area, and they market their expertise to many organizations. If one (or more) of those organizations has intellectual capital in something that an independent contractor has provided to them, the contractor should not be able to provide that same intellectual capital to other organizations, especially competing organizations. However, that expert still needs to make a living, and she does so by marketing her expertise.
This conflict is resolved best by having a clear contract with the independent contractor from the outset of the business arrangement, specifying who owns the expert’s work product, and who owns the contractor’s notes and ideas gotten while the contractor works for the organization.
One way to resolve the conflict is for the contractor and organization to agree to a shop right for the organization, wherein the contractor owns the intellectual capital, but the organization has a royalty-free license thereupon for the life of the information. This is very contractor-friendly because it allows the contractor to freely market the information to any other organization that she might contract with, but the organization can suffer from this arrangement because it cannot keep the information the contractor developed as trade secret (if the contractor assigns any invention then the organization can of course hold that patent), and therefore cannot properly commercialize any product that is derived from that information.
Another way to resolve the conflict is to “flip the coin” and give the organization full ownership of the intellectual capital that the contractor develops but allow the contractor access to all the non-trade-secret information he developed for the organization. This is excellent for the organization, but may deny to the contractor some or all of his area of expertise to market to other potential clients.
Many ways exist to resolve this apparent conflict between the organization and the independent contractor. Outright purchase of information, royalties for access to information, grantbacks, agreements that change with time, sublicenses, assignments, use licenses can all be used individually or in combination to reach a mutually satisfactory agreement between the parties.
Clearly, each contract with each independent contractor needs to be negotiated individually. The contract will be based on the needs of each party at the time and in the foreseeable future, and these needs change with the parties and over time.
Employees

Agreements between an organization and its employees are used routinely to protect an organization’s intellectual property assets. They usually cover an organization’s trade secrets, inventions and works of authorship, and are generally signed both on an employee’s entrance to an organization and exit from the organization.
Employment contracts are part of the intellectual property of the organization; they delineate the protection of the organization’s intellectual assets both during and after the employee’s tenure. Each organization must be careful to ask each employee in an entrance interview whether she signed a non-disclosure agreement with any former employer that would be violated by the current organization’s employment agreement; if she did, the current employer must modify that employee’s agreement so as not to violate the former agreement.
Some employment agreements cover all trade secrets, inventions and works of authorship, whether or not related to the job the employee was hired to perform; others cover only those works created specifically for the organization while employed there; still others cover those works that the employee creates for the organization and those works that would compete directly or indirectly with any goal of the organization.
The last of the above examples may be the most commonly used paradigm. The first (all trade secrets inventions and works of authorship while employed) is too broad; for example, this type of agreement could have given the valuable HARRY POTTER™ franchise to an employer had author J.K. Rowling signed it while writing the novels, whether or not the employer contributed anything (such as time, equipment, artistic support, etc.) to the work. This, of course, would have led to the employer’s enrichment at the employee’s expense, which is not a fair outcome for the employee. The second (only those works specifically created for the organization while employed at the organization) is not broad enough to properly protect the organization; an employee who must only protect an organization’s intellectual property while employed by the organization is free to leave and use the intellectual property she developed for the organization for a subsequent employer, possibly a competitor. The last example (works created for the organization and works that would compete with the goals of the organization) generally avoids assigning an employee’s off-hours noncompeting but potentially valuable work to an employer, while protecting the trade secrets and other intellectual capital of the organization. It may therefore be most likely to be advantageous for both the employer and the employee.
The intellectual property audit can ensure that the proper protection for the organization’s intellectual property is in place with the employment and independent contractor agreements. In doing so, the attorney verifies that those agreements are neither overbroad nor too narrow. If the employment agreement or the independent contractor agreement is either too broad or too narrow, the attorney can recommend changes to be made in the contract, and perhaps provide means for employees and independent contractors who signed the insufficient agreement and later left the organization to be brought under the umbrella of the new, more appropriate agreement.
The auditing attorney should examine the contracts for both independent contractors and employees to ensure that the proper protections are in place: trade secrets are not to be revealed to others without authorization, patents and copyrights are to be assigned to the organization,
Trademarks

An organization should record each assignment of a trademark with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in language that includes the goodwill and not the trademark alone with the assignment. The attorney performing the intellectual property audit can ensure that the proper assignment is made and recorded for each mark.
It is possible for an organization to lose its rights in a trademark or service mark through abandonment of the mark, or through failure to timely file the proper documentation with the USPTO. The auditing attorney must confirm that the organization filed the required registration and maintenance documents with the USPTO and that it has used the mark continuously in interstate commerce.
It is also possible for an organization to lose its rights in a trademark or service mark through improper licensing and improper policing of its mark. If a mark has, through improper policing, become a generic descriptor for the goods, the mark is lost. “Escalator” and “cellophane” are two examples of marks that became generic and therefore lost to their owners; more current examples of marks that remain marks but are endangered are Kleenex® (how often do we grab a “kleenex” from the box of another brand of tissue?) and Xerox® (have you ever “xeroxed” a page?). The auditing attorney must ensure that any danger of becoming generic is addressed promptly and vigorously. Xerox Corp. and Kimberly-Clark (the makers of Xerox-brand photocopiers and Kleenex-brand tissues, respectively) spend millions of dollars annually to protect their marks.
The current registrations must cover the organization’s current trademarks, logos, slogans, and brands. By examining the packaging of the goods, the attorney can determine whether the currently registered marks match the currently used marks. The attorney should bring any discrepancy to the attention of the client.
Licenses

Licensing of intellectual property is one of the most efficient ways to capitalize on an intellectual asset. This means that the intellectual asset must be well protected by a license agreement. The full extent of a licensing agreement is beyond the scope of this work; it is a complex contract that should be negotiated on an individual basis.
The intellectual property attorney should make to make the following determinations with respect to the license contract.

• Is this an express license?

  Licenses may be express or implied. An express license is a statement by the licensor that the licensee has certain rights to use intellectual property owned by the licensor. If the statement is written down and signed by both parties, then that writing provides strong evidence of the existence of a contract.
  An implied license may arise from any one of a number of situations. They may be imposed by the courts based on the actions of the parties, or the parties may create the implied license without taking the matter to court by simply continuing to act as though a license exists. The intellectual property attorney might find an implied license by interviewing research personnel to see if they use technology from any source other than from within the organization, then tracing the ownership of any intellectual property that they use. The attorney might also find an implied license through a court’s ruling in litigation involving the technology in question.

• Is there a writing?

  As with all contracts, a writing is not absolutely required for a valid, enforceable bargain. In the knowledge-driven economy today, of course, most contracts are reduced to writing and signed, but an oral contract can be equally binding as a written one. Clearly a writing is far preferred in any contract situation, including an intellectual property audit, because the attorney conducting the intellectual property audit has the words of the agreement before her on the printed page.

• Is a license exclusive? Is the organization that is undergoing the intellectual
  property audit the licensor or licensee?

  A license can be exclusive (perhaps even denying the intellectual property owner the right to use the property) or non-exclusive. An exclusive license must be careful to look to the future and leave an opening in case the license proves unsatisfactory for any reason to either party.

• Does each license contain a granting clause?

  Each license must contain a granting clause specifying the scope of the license and the licensee’s powers with the license.

• Has the owner of the property reserved any rights?

  An intellectual property owner may choose to reserve, or keep back, some of the rights to the property (an example of this is the granting of a non-exclusive license).

• Does the license agreement specify who owns technology improvements?

  A license should specify who owns any improvements that the licensee makes in the licensed technology.

• Does the license specify royalties, payment schedules and accompanying
  reports?

  A license should specify all royalties and payment schedules, and the accompanying reports.

• Does the license agreement contain the standard contract clauses?

  A license agreement should contain the standard contract clauses, such as term of the agreement, how the agreement can be terminated or modified, who defends the licensed technology in the event of litigation, whether the parties agree to arbitration before or instead of litigation, an integration clause, and so forth as needed.

Trade Secrets

Any valuable patent is contained in an envelope of undisclosed information. This envelope is the trade secret know-how that an organization develops around the use of its patented technology. It is not described in the specification of the patent because the knowledge was developed after the patent application was filed, and the patent law requires only that the best mode as of the date of filing be disclosed.
Trade secrets are protected by contracts between the organization and its employees, between the organization and its independent contractors, between the organization and its business or technology partners. The intellectual property attorney who performs the intellectual property audit should evaluate how well these agreements protect the valuable trade secrets.
Copyrights, Including Organization Handbooks

An organization’s copyrights may be its most valuable asset. If the organization is based in the arts, then copyright becomes the foremost protection for its intellectual property.
Any material that is fixed and perceivable, directly or indirectly, in a tangible medium is copyrighted under the current U.S. copyright law. It is copyrighted from the moment of creation, but full protection is not available unless the work is registered in the Copyright Office at the Library of Congress. The intellectual property attorney must check the status of the registration of the organization’s written materials to ensure that the courts can enforce the copyright laws of the United States if those written materials are infringed.
Training

Once the intellectual property audit is complete and the recommendations made, the organization should implement a training program for all employees to ensure that the recommendations that emerged from the audit are followed. Training should take place for all levels of the organization. The organization must identify those areas in which employees need training, and the level at which they need it. It then must design and deliver the appropriate training courses and materials, and design and deliver the appropriate follow-up ongoing support.
Copyright 2003, 2007, Nancy Baum Delain. All rights reserved.
Continued in Part V.

Nancy Baum Delain, a registered patent attorney, is the managing member of Delain Law Office, PLLC, an intellectual property and business law firm located in Clifton Park, NY. Nancy’s expertise lies in patent, trademark and copyright prosecution, contract, licensing, and general business matters. She answers her own phone. Find out more at http://www.ipattorneyfirm.com

Generally speaking, there are two camps of believers among forex traders. Some believe the best way to trade is to exclusively follow technical trends, while some others believe trading decisions should be based on fundamental trends. Anyway, what is technical trading and what exactly is fundamental trading? Technical trading is the art of taking forex trading decisions on the basis of the chart patterns, indicators and price actions as seen on the broker’s platform. While fundamental trading on the other hand is taking trading decision based on economical data, events, statements and general speculations. Now the question is which of the two trading styles is safer and more sensible to use. In order to take an informed decision, let’s look at the pros and cons of each of the trading styles.

To start with, market directions and moves are actually driven by the news. So they are real time indicators of price movements. However, there are a number of downsides to fundamental trading:

1. Volatility: Trading the forex market during news or data release period could be very difficult due to the level of price volatility at this time. Very often the price of the affected currency pair is driven up and down like a boat caught in the raging sea because the trading volume as at then is usually low. Institutional traders and other large volume professional traders normally step aside so they can take their time to figure out the implications of the figures and their risk outlook. In fact, usually, the market would already have priced in the data before you get the figures from the traditional sources, so slippages and whipsaws are also common at this time.

2. Subjectivity: Another reason fundamental trading may not be advisable is that economical data are often subjected to subjective analysis: There are usually multiple perspectives by market players. For instance, even when the non-farm pay roll actual data exceeds the forecast significantly, some analysts will sometimes compare that with unemployment rate and some other labour data before they make an inference.

3. Complexity: The global economy is so interwoven that the economic situations of various nations have effect on one another. This makes the situation complex because it is not enough to focus on the data that directly affects the currency pairs you are trading alone. This is apart from various statements and events that complicate the issue.

Conversely, technical trading is the logical means by which the pattern created by the complex market psychology is traded. The major downside to this trading style is that you don’t get to have a broad outlook and logical explanations for price movements. However, technical trading has a load of advantages:

1. Technical trends, patterns and indicators unlike their fundamental counterparts are not virtual; they are easy to read and follow, even for a novice trader.

2. With proper understanding of time frame analysis, it’s easy to know what the market has been doing, what it’s doing right now, and exactly where and when to get on board.

3. Technical trading affords you the privilege to determine when a particular trend has reached the top or bottom. Similarly, through the knowledge of technical pattern, it’s easy to know if what you have is a continuation pattern, a correction, retracement e.t.c. You can also know precisely how far a move will advance, and sometimes you can tell when a move will begin.

We could go on and on about technical trading, but I believe you’ll agree with me that it appears to be the better way to trade. However, it’s best not to totally neglect any of the two styles. While we could spend a substantial part of our trading time watching the charts, it’s also very good to keep an eye on the news releases, speeches, and events to ensure we don’t have a myopic view of the market. In fact, in my experience, the chance of having a successful trade significantly increases when both the technical and fundamental indicators are in harmony.

The very best way to trade is to automate your trades, especially if you can get a forex robot that trades with great accuracy and makes you money like a printing and minting machine. The secret of my recently found great success in forex trading is an autotrader. visit the following site to get it “FREE”: http://onlinehonestbiz.wordpress.com There you’ll also get very useful information on forex technical analysis e.g Multiple time frame analysis.

Houston — U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers seized a shipment of counterfeit sunglasses with an estimated manufacturer’s suggested retail price of more than $3 million. The officers seized the shipment September 16 after they confirmed the merchandise violated trademark laws.

“CBP officers are actively enforcing trade laws and protecting legitimate business owners and consumers from copyright and trademark infringements,” said Jeffrey O. Baldwin Sr., CBP’s Houston director of Field Operations. “When we identify products as counterfeit or confusingly similar, we take the necessary steps to protect the consumer and seize the shipment.”

The importer described the container’s shipment as sunglasses with a domestic value of about $50,000; however, when officers inspected the shipment they found sunglasses with designer name brands including Coach, XLOOP, Etienne Aigner and Lacoste affixed to the shades. Were the sunglasses authentic designer sunglasses, they would have retail value in the millions of dollars.

Seized property specialists will take possession of the sunglasses. CBP could assess fines and penalties to the importer that could equal the amount of the MSRP value.

In fiscal year 2009, the Houston CBP officers seized counterfeit sunglasses with an estimated MSRP value of $10.6 million. In fiscal year 2008, nationally the domestic value of counterfeit goods seized for intellectual property rights violations was up 38.7 percent to $272.2 million, an increase of more than $72 million from fiscal year 2007.

CBP seizures of counterfeit sunglasses and or their parts reached domestic value of $7.9 million in fiscal year 2008, which more than doubled the estimated domestic value of seizures of $3.9 million from fiscal year 2007.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is the unified border agency within the Department of Homeland Security charged with the management, control and protection of our nation’s borders at and between the official ports of entry. CBP is charged with keeping terrorists and terrorist weapons out of the country while enforcing hundreds of U.S. laws.

A law inspired by a New Hampshire woman’s determination to keep her health insurance while fighting cancer is now in effect across the country.

Michelle’s Law is named for Michelle Morse, who attended college full-time in order to keep her insurance before she died of colon cancer in 2005 at the age of 22.

The federal law allows college students to take up to a year off school for medical reasons and remain on their family’s health insurance plan. It was sponsored by Rep. Paul Hodes, who joined Morse’s mother at a news conference Friday, the day the law took effect.

Morse’s mother, AnnMarie Morse, pushed hard for state and federal legislation after her daughter’s death. She called it a bittersweet day and said she will continue to fight for health care reform.

Training employees and educating consumers to be able to use particular computer software is a tough job. It takes time and skill to write training manuals and design illustrations to go along with them. That’s why many business owners are choosing computer courseware instead of creating training manuals of their own. Computer courseware is pre-designed and customizable so you can arrange the lessons and customize them to fit your training needs. It saves time and money, and can be done easily in-house once you have a copy of the training materials.What is Computer Courseware?Computer courseware is software and/or training materials used for educational purposes. Educational institutions may use courseware to teach students how to operate a particular computer software program. Companies may use it to educate employees on using a new software program that has been installed for business operations. Also, companies that sell computers, software, or other related products and services might offer computer courseware to their customers as a free “how-to” guide. The training courseware can be used for almost any type of computer software. There are Macintosh manuals, Microsoft courseware, Adobe Photoshop courseware, Excel courseware, and many others.Tips for Maximizing your Computer Courseware BenefitsTo get the most benefit out of your computer courseware, use it in creative ways. For example, package it nicely and offer it as a free bonus with a purchase to your clients. If you sell Microsoft Word software, then advertise up-front that each customer will receive a free beginner’s course on how to use Microsoft Word. Then, include your Microsoft courseware with each purchase. If shipping products, package it neatly with the product. If selling in-store, make sure your employees know to give the bonus courseware with each purchase.If you sell Macintosh computers, provide free Macintosh manuals with the computer. Those customers who are brand new to Macintosh computers will appreciate this tremendously! Package your Computer Courseware for Long-Term UseWhen you print the courseware manual, put the pages in a nice binder with your company logo, store location, phone number, and website address. Also include a “welcome” letter explaining briefly what the customer will learn in the course. Customers are more likely to keep the manual if it is packaged this way. If you hand them a lot of papers that have been stapled or bound together, these are likely to end up in the trash!Another idea is to include a sales presentation at the beginning or conclusion of the courseware manual to try and up-sale customers on a new product or service. You’re already providing something free that’s of value, so why not make an offer while the customer is reading your materials?If you operate an online business with an e-zine or newsletter, offer free computer courseware with every subscription. It may seem like a lot to give someone who’s signing up for a free newsletter, but the rewards can be great. The long-term value of a newsletter subscriber base can be monumental!As you can see, computer courseware can add great value to your products and services, and it’s usually very easy and affordable to get started. All you have to do is order rights to the courseware, print your training manuals, and package them for distribution. Then, let the computer courseware materials do the rest!

Chris Robertson is an author of Majon International, one of the worlds MOST popular internet marketing companies on the web. Learn more about Add Value with Computer Courseware or Majon’s Business and Entrepreneurs directory.