Roland Corporation has long been an industry leader in the design and manufacture of electronic musical instruments, effects products, recording equipment, and other accessories. In short, Roland has set the benchmark in the music industry for the past four decades.
Since its inception, Roland has produced products that have continuously used a unique combination of design elements and features that have become distinctive to Roland, including their shape, color schemes, and fonts. In addition, Roland has dedicated significant time and resources in creating its high-quality sounds. Due to Roland's widespread commercial success, and the prevalent use of Roland products by professional and amateur musicians, consumers of musical instruments recognize the appearance and sound of Roland products and can readily identify them as Roland products.
To safeguard Roland's quality and brand, the distinctive design and appearance of Roland products and their incorporation of Roland digital sounds are protected under the appropriate trade dress, trademark, and copyright laws. In addition, as a leader in technology, Roland has also devoted great efforts to assure that its innovative products are also covered under the applicable patent laws as well.
Intellectual Property and Brand Protection
Roland actively protects our Intellectual Property (IP) and branding as key elements of our corporate compliance. Our Research and Development (R&D) staff develop proprietary technologies and create new products, and then actively obtain the IP rights to protect them. We also have great respect for others' IP rights, and work diligently to avoid infringing those rights.
Utility and Design Patents
As part of our product development process, the Roland R&D staff work closely with our Intellectual Property department to ensure that our products' cutting-edge technology are protected through our global approach to utility patent prosecution. This global approach to technology development is but one element which distinguishes Roland from its competition.
In addition to our utility patent filings, we also ensure that the nonfunctional ornamental elements and distinctive product appearance are also protected through the filing of design patents and enforcement of the appropriate product configuration and trade dress laws as well. For example, in the U.S. trade dress is protected under the U.S. Federal Trademark Law commonly known as the “Lanham Act”, while in Japan, counterfeit goods are prohibited under the “Unfair Competition Prevention Act.” Roland's IP enforcement actions are always taken in accordance with these and other appropriate laws worldwide.
Trademarks
In order to maintain the distinctive Roland, BOSS, V-MODA and DW brands, Roland has sustained a vigorous trademark registration and enforcement program since its founding. For example, we have been consistently using the widely respected Roland logo from the company's earliest days. Each brand name is registered trademarks in the U.S., Japan, and many other countries throughout the world. In addition to these core marks, Roland has registered numerous additional marks which denote Roland's high quality and reliability throughout the world.
Copyrights
Many types of copyrighted content, such as Roland's proprietary musical tunes, sound sources, and performance data created by our engineers are installed in our products. Roland has also implemented a strong copyright protection program for its associated marketing material, technical information, images, sounds, and other features, in addition to our copyrighted product content. For example, Roland engineers work tirelessly to reproduce the best acoustic instrumental sounds and store them digitally in our products for customer use. These are all protected from unauthorized copying, distribution and sale under various copyright statutes.
Activity against Counterfeiters and IP Infringements
Recently, there has been a significant increase in the infringement of Roland's IP. This activity has been particularly severe on the internet, and is often present on websites offering counterfeit Roland, BOSS, V-MODA and DW branded products, products displaying confusingly similar clones of our products, those infringing our trademarks and trade dress, and those containing unauthorized downloads of our copyrighted musical and visual contents and recordings. In addition to misleading consumers, the offering of such potentially inferior products can tarnish our high quality reputation or damage our brands. In some cases activity may lead to the equipment failure from virus infections, computer problems caused by unknown software, or leakage of customer's personal information.
In order to protect our customers, Roland is determined to take aggressive action to stop such activities. In addition to a willingness to take direct legal action against infringers, Roland has implemented an advanced infringement monitoring system to protect our IP and brand protection. The system monitors infringing activities globally round the clock.