Law Office

You hear it over and over again: "The key to business growth is protecting your intellectual property."  But what, exactly, does that mean?  Intellectual property is made up of four very different bodies of law that create different types of rights.  A business that wants to extract value from its intellectual property rights needs to understand the assets it has, what rights are protectable, and how to maintain those rights.  

We can help you with the following:

Audits - Audits can be done for a variety of reasons.  For example,  a business owner considering a sale might conduct an audit so assets can be identified for sale, and rights secured or documented so value can be extracted. 

Licensing - Licenses are contractual relationships that allow companies to share intellectual property assets without selling the underlying asset. 

Trademarks - Marks need to be identified, cleared, registered and used properly.  Experienced trademark counsel can help you with registration strategies that allow you to maximize your rights, while keeping your budget in mind.

Copyrights - We can help you understand not only the scope of your own copyrights, but also the third party rights in images, music and text that your company may wish to use.

Trade Secret Rights - These rights may be accorded to market information such as customer lists, and to technical information.  We can help you document and protect these rights through license agreements, employment and consulting agreements and non-disclosure agreements.

Trademarks are names and other symbols that identify you in the marketplace.  Trademark law protects the presentation of your identity to your customers. 

Copyrighted works are tangible expressions of an idea.  Copyright law protects the expression of an idea, not the underlying idea.

Trade Secrets are business, technical and other similar secrets that have value in the marketplace because they are not known to others.  Trade Secret law relies primarily on  statutes, human resources law, and contract law to allow people to use the secret information and still keep it secret.

Patents protect the embodiment of a novel and non-obvious idea.