No matter what your business, developing and knowing how to protect your intellectual property is vital to your success. As a practicing California copyright and trademark attorney for 20+ years, I have assisted my clients with protecting their copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets; preventing unfair competition and false advertising claims; protecting their software code; and in licensing their protected works. I offer comprehensive services for creating, maintaining, licensing, protecting, and enforcing intellectual property rights. I prepare and file copyright and trademark applications both here in the United States and abroad. Within this interdisciplinary practice area, I also negotiate agreements involving strategic alliances, technology transfers and licenses, related marketing agreements, employee non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements, software licenses, and product sales and distribution agreements. I also counsel, represent, negotiate and prepare agreements and policies to protect a company's valuable trade secrets.
Copyright.
My office assists its clients with the registering their copyrights and licensing copyrighted works, whether they be traditional literary materials, art works, photographs, videos, scripts, sound recordings, etc.. or digital images, computer software, web site designs, or icons. My office also aids its clients with developing licensing arrangements designed to maximize the rights of U.S. copyright registration owners. This includes the filing of copyright registrations (as well as trademark registrations), and filing such registrations with the United States Customs Service to enable Customs to identify and intercept infringing goods being imported into the United States.
Trademark.
The trademark practice involves assisting clients in selecting and obtaining a trademark and maintaining registered trademarks, including conducting all necessary trademark searches, filing applications, and preparing and filing necessary affidavits and renewal applications.
Trade Secret Protection.
I have counseled numerous clients concerning measures and programs to be designed to protect their confidential business information, including source code, customer lists and any other confidential data that provides the business owner with a competitive edge.
Licensing and Distribution.
This area of my practice involves proprietary rights protection, licensing, and product distribution. I negotiate and document a wide variety of transactions involving intellectual property rights, including the licensing, sale, distribution and development of computer hardware and software, content, and other copyrights and trademarks. This generally involves advising clients on appropriate business structures and distribution techniques, as well as the preparation of a wide array of distribution, licensing, sale representative, OEM, and agency arrangements.
Intellectual Property Audit.
An important business practice for many companies is the intellectual property audit. Management should also be educated as to what is and is not protected by applicable intellectual property laws and the company should routinely review the information posted on it's web site to ensure it is accurate, up-to-date, and appropriate for disclosure to the public. I have aided many companies in educating their management on:
- How to identify all of the company's own intellectual property, as well as the intellectual property used by the company from third parties;
- The appropriate steps that should be taken to protect the company's intellectual property, whether it be through trademark or copyright registration, renewals of said registrations, or ensuring that all applicable contracts have the appropriate clauses;
- How to implement procedures to ensure the required intellectual property notices are properly displayed in connection with the sale of the company's products and services; and
- How to implement procedures to ensure that infringing activities are monitored and appropriate actions taken to enforce the company rights.
