Intellectual Property

Protecting  the goodwill associated with your brand lies at the heart of everything we do. We work with our clients to develop and execute cost-effective strategies to clear, protect, defend, and enforce their brands on a global basis. And, after handling more than 3,000 trademark applications and registrations in more than 100 countries, we’ve become quite good at it.

We’ve also become quite good at helping our clients commercialize and monetize their brands, as we routinely structure and negotiate licensing and distribution agreements across a wide array of industries, including representation of franchisors needing to comply with state and federal franchise laws.

Whether you’re looking to protect your own creative works and content or looking to use content produced by others in your marketing, our team can assist you with navigating the applicable copyright laws. We regularly help clients register their copyright-protected works with the U.S. Copyright Office and structure and negotiate related licensing and distribution agreements.

We provide these services to household names and heavy hitters, including universities, New York Times best-selling authors and industry-leading YouTubers, as well as smaller content publishers, film and new media production houses, artists, photographers, musicians, and many other consumer-facing businesses. Outside of the creative sphere, we represent numerous business-to-business clients, often collaborating with members of our Technology, Outsourcing & Data Security team in our representation of software and information technology companies.

From non-disclosure agreements to complicated licenses of trade secrets and know-how, we can help you identify and protect your trade secrets and other proprietary information. We also know from experience that current and former employees often pose the greatest threat to these important assets, so we work closely with members of our Labor & Employment team to help you draft employment agreements that protect them.

Our team has developed a cost-effective, systematic approach to the defense and enforcement of our client’s intellectual property rights, including:

• Trademark rights, including proceedings before the USPTO Trademark Trial and Appeal Board and UDRP proceedings via ICANN in relation to domain name disputes
• Copyright claims including online and social media enforcement and defense
• Trade secret misappropriation actions
• Unfair and deceptive trade practice claims, including responses to civil investigative demands issued by the Federal Trade Commission or state Attorneys General.

Whether we’re providing a global brand watch service, investigating a possible infringement, initiating an online take-down request, enforcing a client’s rights in formal litigation, or defending a client from unreasonable demands, we never lose the forest for the trees and continuously seek a business-like resolution.

Our bottom line is protecting what’s most important to yours, so we take care to work efficiently and cost-effectively. Whether you’re running a large business or a growing company, your budget is important. You’ll find that many of our intellectual property services are provided at highly competitive, fixed-fee rates, with costs approved by you in advance. The world of intellectual property can be complicated, so it is important to us that you not only understand the services we provide, but that you can predictably budget for the corresponding costs.