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 INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Obtaining, managing, protecting and enforcing intellectual property should be among the highest priorities of every business concern. We help clients with all of these tasks. Specifically, we strive to create value for our clients by helping them build and enhance their intellectual property portfolios, as well as helping them navigate around the intellectual property holdings of others. We also assist our clients to develop and execute strategies that allow them to maximize the value of their intellectual property, through licensing, teaming and cooperative arrangements, and acquisitions. In performing these tasks we:
 Develop IP strategies for protecting new products and avoiding infringement in the United States
and abroad;
Perform due diligence on IP assets to assess the value and risks associated with the acquisition
and transfer of such rights;
Enforce IP rights in a cost effective manner;
Manage IP rights to help ensure that they are afforded the proper duration, scope and value.
Our strength in developing IP protection strategies is getting to know our clients' businesses and understanding their goals. Just as we are careful to fully protect important assets to their fullest extent, we are careful not to waste resources securing rights in marginal assets. It is also very important to us to help our clients understand the rights of others so that they do not inadvertently subject themselves to infringement liability. By working with our network of business affiliates throughout the world we are able to make develop and implement strategies both domestically and internationally.
Another core strength is helping our clients understand the value of a business deal, be it a license, acquisition, distribution agreement, or teaming agreement. We work with our clients to determine the value of any given IP and the risks that might be associated with enforcing it or defending it from attack. With this information, our clients can determine whether a particular strategy will likely prove beneficial to both its long and short term interests. Moreover, our analysis can help decide, among other things, what key terms need to be negotiated, what the scope of a warranty should be, whether an escrow arrangement is needed and whether there should be liability caps.
When it comes time to enforce IP rights we attempt to provide our clients with various alternatives to litigation and help them choose the proper course of action. We are often able to evaluate the strengths and weakness of particular claims so well that we are able to help our clients negotiate an acceptable resolution without incurring the costs of engaging in a full-blown dispute. Of course, when it comes to advocating for our clients in adversarial actions, we are able to undertake such responsibilities on budget. We have litigated in federal and state courts, contested and defended trademark rights at the Trademark Trial and Appeals Board, handled arbitrations and negotiated settlement agreements.
Our service does not end simply because we have secured IP rights for our clients. It is our effort and acumen in helping our clients manage those rights to secure tangible value that makes us special. Whether it's helping a client get a contract, secure a license, commercialize their technology, find a distributor, build a brand, or enhance the state of the art, we understand that value truly comes when our clients achieve their goals. Along the way, we help our clients monitor and renew their IP rights, protect themselves competitors and copy-cats, and identify new techniques for exploiting their IP rights.
PATENTS, TRADEMARKS, COPYRIGHTS AND TRADE SECRETS
The core frameworks for protecting intellectual property are patents, trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets. We possess great experience and expertise in obtaining protection through all four of these mechanisms and using combinations of them to secure the best possible protection for our clients. In addition, we have unique expertise with the regulations governing IP as it is developed, used and applied in government contracts. We list the various types of services and tasks we perform in connection with obtaining and protecting
Patents
Novelty Searches
Patentability Opinions
Validity Opinions
Patent prosecution in the areas of mechanical inventions and processes, computer software,
and business methods
Protection of product designs and configurations through Design Patents.
Infringement litigation, offensive and Defensive
Trademarks
Handling all aspects of domestic and foreign prosecution
Counseling clients on selecting and developing a brand
Oppositions and Petitions to Cancel
Prosecution Appeals to the Trademark Trial and Appeals Board
Litigation relating to infringement, dilution, product disparagement and unfair trade practices
Protecting against misuse of trademarks in Internet related technologies
Trade Dress protection and enforcement
Copyrights
Prosecuting copyright applications for written works, computer software, computer
databases, internet websites, musical works, visual arts, and multi-media works
Counseling on infringement and avoiding infringement,
Advising on fair use of copyrightable works,
Litigation relating to infringement, misuse and inducement
Works for Hire
Software development using clean room procedures.
Infringement stemming from unauthorized file sharing
Trade Secrets
Establishing and implementing protection strategies for Trade Secrets
Drafting agreements to ensure Confidentiality and Non-competition
Litigating Trade Secret misappropriation claims
Strategies for reverse engineering
Government Contracts
Counseling government contractors in all areas of intellectual property management
Technical data rights retention under DoD and civilian agency contracts
Technology transfer and Cooperative Research and Development Agreements
Federal Claims Court litigation against the United States for recovery of IP royalties
Export control issues including counseling on the EAR, ITAR and OFAC regulations
INFO TECH, E-COMMERCE & INTERNET LAW
The area of information technology has seen tremendous growth over the past ten years and we have been a part of it. We have helped clients with the legal aspects of issues that were largely unheard of ten years ago, such as computer networking, data protection and encryption, web-site security, digital privacy, data mining, domain name management, and file-sharing to name a few. We have aggressively pursued and prevailed against copy-cat web sites and software pirates using the shut down provisions of the Digital millennium Copyright Act. We have helped our clients put their businesses on the web and migrate their software products to web enabled applications . . . and as a result, we have watched them grow their customer base dramatically. We have devised strategies to help data aggregators protect their databases and we have helped data miners identify the limits of their activities. In sum, we have been instrumental in helping our clients adapt to the "new economy of the 21st century" and we look forward to continuing to help our clients navigate and shape the laws in this area for years to come.
LICENSING AND RELATED AGREEMENTS
Licensing and other IP transactions allow an organization to maximize the potential of its IP holdings. Whether to obtain better product distribution, enhance existing technologies with state of the art improvements, combine forces with a partner to solve an industry need or any other related need, an organization must carefully assess how to optimize its own IP and how to benefit from acquiring IP rights of others. We are extremely skilled in helping organizations negotiate, draft, construe and enforce the agreements that implement these decisions. Further, we are equally skilled in helping our clients find the "win-win" terms that make our clients good business partners-even in situations that start out in an adversarial posture. We have worked on deals involving some of the world's largest companies on a wide array of technologies. We are skilled in:
License agreements of all various kinds and particular software-related licenses,
Distribution, branding and private-labeling agreements,
Partnering, Joint Venture and Affiliate agreements
ASP and web-hosting agreements
Website usage agreements, including security and information management agreements
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