From trademarks to malpractice
U.S. trademark search
now on CD-ROM

Alpenglow has designed a CD-ROM that contains a complete database of registered U.S. trademarks called Trademark Quest. In addition to giving small businesses access to the nearly 369,000 active trademarks registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, users can easily conduct searches of distinctive company names and competitors using a graphical point-and-click interface that provides summary and detailed view results.

Trademark Quest also includes an official trademark application with general information and instructions and a directory of nationwide patent and trademark depository libraries, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office phone numbers, addresses and fee schedules.

Available for personal computers running Microsoft Windows 3.1, 95, or NT, Alpenglow says the CD costs less than half of what a single professional search might run. For further information, contact Peter Ashley at Alpenglow, 508/497-2371 or check out the web site, http://www.ultranet.com/~pashley/.

Dummy tells all!

"Where there is no property damage, there can be no personal injury." This claim commonly made by insurance company adjusters now can be disputed graphically and convincingly using the new Legal Video from the Rockwall, Texas-based company.

Ideal for smaller cases, the availability of this low-budget visual demonstrative evidence of two automobile impacts, one at four miles per hour, and one at nine miles per hour, allows juries to see a live-action re-enactment of a rear-end collison. The impact, played at 20 percent of the actual speed, shows the ease with which an injury can occur to the back, neck and spine.

For more information, call 214/771-4081 or fax Legal Video at 214/771-4827.

Contact manager runs in word processing programs

Baseline Data Systems has released a contact manager software -- Info Accelerator (IA) version 3.0 -- designed to run within Word for Windows, WordPerfect for Windows and Ami Pro.

IA installs a pulldown menu on the tool bar which gives access to a phone book, calendar and to-do list plus options like Quick Letter, Quick Label, Quick Fax, Quick Mail Merge and Print Phone Book. IA's document features allow the user to use all the capabilities of their word processing programs when creating new templates or editing the letters, labels, envelopes, forms and reports that come with IA.

A printing utility also comes with IA. For information on this new contact manager software, call Chris Furgis at 1-800/429-5325.

Attorneys need malpractice skills

It is estimated that a typical attorney is likely to fall prey to three malpractice suits during a career. In an effort to provide attorneys with information and skills necessary to ward off such claims, West Publishing has released two new publications.

Legal Malpractice, 4th Edition, a four-volume set by experts Ronald Mallen and Jeffrey Smith, frequently has been recognized as an authority by state and federal courts since its initial release in 1977. The authors discuss problems peculiar to many specialized areas of law as well as the litigation of a malpractice claim from both plaintiff and defense perspectives. New chapters in this 4th edition cover judicial sanctions, RICO, preventing losses in securities transactions, bankruptcy and debtor-creditor law and financial institution litigation.

The second release, Legal Malpractice: The Law Office Guide to Purchasing Legal Malpractice Insurance, has been edited by Mallen and compiled by the San Francisco firm Long and Levit. It is the only national publication available to advise attorneys on the purchase and use of legal malpractice insurance.

For additional information on these two publications, call West at 1-800/241-0214 or check out the company's home page at http://www.westpub.com.

Upgrades to PREMISE increase storage capacity

West Publishing's newly released and upgraded PREMISE Research Software 3.0 stores 80 percent more information on a single CD-ROM and has a Natural Language searching capability.

CD-ROM libraries published with PREMISE 3.0 will have the capacity to store more than one billion characters of text (equivalent to about 120 volumes of West's Federal Reporter) on each disc. This means that most CD-ROM libraries will be stocked with fewer discs, making research more productive.

Existing West CD-ROM libraries will be re-published to achieve improved disc capacity. However, PREMISE 3.0 will be able to read existing CD-ROMS.

West publishes nearly 200 legal titles on CD-ROM, including case law for all 50 states and federal case law and statutes. For more information about PREMISE 3.0, call 1-800/255-2549, ext. 2.