Fairfield is the county seat of Wayne County, Illinois, United States, the site of Frontier Community College, Fairfield Community High School, Fairfield Memorial Hospital, and Airtex; an auto parts manufacturing facility. The population was 5,421 at the 2000 census. Fairfield is most famous for being the hometown of the Shelton Brothers Gang, notorious bootleggers who failed in defeating the Harrisburg, Illinois based Birger Gang to control criminal activities in Southern Illinois. During the first half of the 20th century gang leaders Carl, Earl and Bernie Shelton made Fairfield a household name of the time. Based on testimony of Charlie Birger himself, the Shelton Brothers were convicted for a 1925 unsolved mail carrier robbery of $15,000 and were sentenced to 25 years much to the relief of the denizens of Fairfield and surrounding villages. Soon after the Shelton Gang disappeared as Birger dominated bootlegging in Southern Illinois until he himself was hanged in Benton. for the murder of West City. Mayor Joe Adams in 1928. Fairfield was the hometown of Kenneth Michael Kays, recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor for heroism during the Vietnam War, and Country music singer-songwriter Lance Miller.

What is intellectual property law?

Under intellectual property law, owners are granted certain exclusive rights to a variety of intangible assets, such as musical, literary, and artistic works; discoveries and inventions; and words, phrases, symbols, and designs. Common types of intellectual property include copyrights, trademarks, patents, industrial design rights and trade secrets. Intellectual property law involves advising and assisting individuals and businesses on the development, use, and protection of intellectual property -- which includes ideas, artistic creations, engineering processes, scientific inventions, and more.

Answers to intellectual property law issues in Illinois

A patent is a document issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) that grants a monopoly for a limited...

Some types of inventions will not qualify for a patent, no matter how interesting or important they are. For example...

In the context of a patent application, an invention is considered novel when it is different from all...

Once a patent is issued, it is up to the owner to enforce it. If friendly negotiations fail, enforcement involves...

Patent protection usually ends when the patent expires.

For all utility patents filed before June 8, 1995,...

Typically, inventor-employees who invent in the course of their employment are bound by employment agreements that...

On its own, a patent has no value. A patent becomes valuable only when a patent owner takes action to profit from...

Copyright protects works such as poetry, movies, video games, videos, DVDs, plays, paintings, sheet music, recorded...

For works published after 1977, the copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years. However, if the work...

The term "trademark" is commonly used to describe many different types of devices that label, identify, and...