Bellevue is a rapidly growing city in King County, Washington, United States, across Lake Washington from Seattle. Long known as a suburb or satellite city of Seattle, it is now categorized as an edge city or a boomburb. The population was 109,569 at the 2000 census, but by 2008 had grown to an estimated 123,771. Downtown Bellevue is undergoing rapid change. It is currently the second largest city center in Washington state with over 35,000 employees and 5,000 residents. Based on per capita income, Bellevue is the 15th wealthiest of 522 communities in the state of Washington. Bellevue was recently named number 1 in CNNMoney's list of the best places to live and launch businesses. Bellevue is French for "beautiful view".

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 Washington

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...