Traditionally, product or brand-placement within a TV series or movie—think Spielberg’s E.T. and Reese’s Piecescandies—requires a license or agreement with the brand to avoid legal issues arising out of trademark. But that’s not always the case. As Pepperdine and Duke have learned in recent months, the intersection of the 1st Amendment with the Lanham Act is a completely different matter.

Six steps to better brand protection: avoid trademark scams, protect products from knockoffs, consider “Brand Gating” for online sales with Amazon’s platform, police the market to monitor your trademark, create enforcement policies for intellectual property, and take social media infringement and dilution seriously.

Protecting a logo with a copyright registration in addition to trademark registration provides the owner with several advantages including two separate causes of action, enhanced statutory damages, greater chance of recovering attorney’s fees, an easier burden of proof to prevail, and potential to recover two separate statutory damage awards. Read for a discussion of logo and copyright law.