Law Office of Alicia Porter

I’ve added a link to the Alaska statutes, including the 2007 statutes for easy reference.  For those that are looking for wills and probates, it is section 13.  The post references for trademarks and copyrights are scattered throughout, so the easiest way to locate all of them is to scroll down to the post that  I gave at a food conference that has them all in one spot.

Probate is a difficult and awful time for the interested persons, even under the best of circumstances. You’ve just lost a loved one, you’re grieving, and then here’s a lawyer telling you that you need an attorney to get through the process, it’ll probably take up to a year (or more, depending on the facts that surrounded the decedent’s estate) and you’re being hounded with the medical bills from the last illness. There is no good way to navigate through the process, but it can be helpful walking into any attorney’s office, knowing what to expect.

a) Expect that probate will take several months, even for an expedited one. There is the opening of the estate ( if the estate is small enough, you may not need to do this, but if it’s over $25, 000 in Alaska, be prepared to open an estate).

b) A personal representative must be appointed.

c) An inventory must be done – this includes rounding up all of the assets and the debts of the decedent, so that you have an idea of what the estate is truly worth, and how to divide the assets properly. In Alaska, the inventory must be done within 90 days of the appointment of the personal representative.

d) Notice must be given to heirs, devisees, and all known creditors. If you know of a creditor, it is wise to inform them of the probate proceeding to avoid a suit to collect by a creditor that should have been paid, and was a known creditor. There is case law from the Supreme Court on this issue.

e) Publication must occur – a newspaper must be contacted and publish so that creditors can come forward.

f) A final distribution petition must be filed with the court and the court must approve it.

g) The personal representative must petition to close the estate.

h) If there is property out of state, an ancillary probate proceeding must also be initiated to deal with the properties.

i) During the probate process, there are the logistics of making sure that the estate assets are being preserved while the probate process is opened. This includes paying taxes on properties, maintaining insurance on vehicles, boats, and planes, and taking steps to make sure that the estate assets are not wasted.

These are the basics of an estate- probate proceedings can often be incredibly intricate, costly and time consuming, not to mention overwhelming when someone is struggling with the grief of losing a loved one.

One of the things that I find helpful to discuss with clients is the need to have trademark insurance. I bring up this issue not because I wish to stress out clients, but because I think it’s important that a client be aware that there can be liability associated with their mark if for some reason their mark is found to have infringed on someone else’s mark. This is also a predominant reason why I encourage clients to have a professional search done by a company such as Thompson. The search can be costly at the outset, but in the long run, $500-$3000 (depending on the type of the search- whether the search is merely the name of the product, the search includes a phrase or the search includes a logo), it’s a small outlay to avoid litigation, when you figure that you have to have $50,000 in hand just to start litigation, and expect the cost to go up from there.

There are some good intellectual property conferences that are coming up in the near future. Although the majority of the conferences are geared towards practicing attorneys, some of them are tailored also to law students and the general public.

The big one in Washington DC in December is the PTO day that the Intellectual Property Owners and Education Foundation. This year it’s on December 3, 2007.

The American Intellectual Property Law Mid Winter Institute starts around January 22 in Phoenix Arizona. They vary from year to year with regards to location, but it’s a nice opportunity to get away when it’s -40 in Alaska.

The American Bar Association puts on a solid conference in Washington D.C. in April.

And, for the individual inventors who want to get information straight from the United States Patent and Trademark Office, they offer traveling road shows throughout the year, but the big one is Inventor’s Day in September.

Also from an inventor’s perspective, the Hardware Show in Las Vegas is in May. This is a worthwhile opportunity for inventor’s to market their ideas to vendors and manufacturers.

For more information on any of them, please click on the links on the Blogroll.