Intellectual Property, Licensing & Trademark

Four kinds, each on different terms. A patent exists only once the Patent Office grants it, and the application must be filed within a year of the company's own first public disclosure. A trademark arises from use, but registration gives nationwide priority from the filing date and a presumption of validity. A copyright arises the moment a work is fixed, yet a US owner cannot sue until it is registered and loses statutory damages if it registers late. A trade secret has no registration at all and lasts exactly as long as the reasonable measures that protect it. We identify what the company holds and match the mechanism to each asset.

Because registration changes the remedies, not just the record. A registered trademark carries nationwide constructive notice, a presumption of validity, and after five years incontestability; it can also be recorded with Customs so counterfeits are stopped at the port. A copyright registration is the ticket to court for a US work, and one filed within three months of publication preserves statutory damages and attorney's fees against infringers who would otherwise owe only provable loss. A patent has no unregistered form at all; the alternative to filing is secrecy, which is a different asset with different rules.

By defining precisely what is being paid for. The royalty base usually matters more than the rate, so "net sales" is defined to the deduction; the audit clause gives the licensor the right to inspect and shifts the audit cost to the licensee above an agreed shortfall; quality control over a licensed mark is required, because a license without it can be treated as abandoning the mark. The termination clause settles what happens to sublicenses and inventory, and the bankruptcy clause matters because the Bankruptcy Code lets a patent or copyright licensee elect to keep its license through the licensor's insolvency. We negotiate and draft licenses that open revenue while keeping ownership intact.

By settling the rights before the launch rather than after the letter. A clearance search before a mark is adopted costs a fraction of a rebrand. A written freedom-to-operate opinion before a product ships is also the usual answer to a charge of willful infringement, which can triple patent damages. Registering copyrights promptly gives the company statutory damages to claim instead of a loss it must prove. An open-source audit before the data room opens avoids the buyer finding the problem first. When a dispute is unavoidable, we represent clients in protecting their rights and competitive position.

Portfolio management is a docket and a set of decisions. The docket carries patent maintenance fees at three and a half, seven and a half and eleven and a half years, trademark declarations of use between years five and six and with every ten-year renewal, and the foreign-filing deadlines at 12 months under the Paris Convention and 30 months for most national phases under the PCT. The decisions are which filings to let lapse because no product uses them, which markets justify a foreign filing, and which unregistered marks the business would miss. Done well, the portfolio maps onto the product roadmap rather than onto the history of what someone once filed.

Trade secrets are protected by keeping them secret, through confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements, access controls, employee and contractor terms, and clear internal policies. Unlike a patent or trademark, a trade secret has no registration, so protection depends on the reasonable steps you take to guard it. We help put those safeguards in place and enforce them if confidential information is misappropriated.