Practice Areas & Industries: Butler, Snow, O'Mara, Stevens & Cannada, PLLC

Practice/Industry Group Overview

Butler Snow's Intellectual Property Group has extensive experience in complex intellectual property, anti-trust and unfair competition litigation, including matters concerning trademark, copyright and patent infringement, false advertising, trade secret misappropriation, trade dress infringement, domain name disputes and franchise termination. Our attorneys are experienced in all areas of intellectual property, technology commercialization, domestic and international licensing.

Our clients range from multinational organizations with established worldwide intellectual property and technology interests to individuals and start-up entities entering the domestic or international marketplace for the first time. We are focused on providing the specialized assistance needed for today's complex technology and intellectual property issues.

Butler Snow avoids a "one size fits all" case/claim management work plan for IP litigation. Our strategy depends on the size and complexity of the matter, the business goals, whether our client will be the plaintiff or defendant, the role of in-house counsel and the level of involvement by the business people. The development of strategy begins in the initial steps and is updated regularly.

Services Available

• Our general trial strategy is to marshal the proof around the desired theme of the case, developed in consultation with the client and, in a number of cases, with experts and consultants.
• While many firms approach all cases with a defense mentality, Butler Snow recognizes that in commercial cases and IP cases the client may be taking an offensive rather than defensive posture.
• Butler Snow has provided leadership in managing document discovery where the client was not prepared to provide these services internally. Through our Summation iBlaze software, we can manage hundreds of thousands of documents and multiple depositions.
• At trial, our Information Technology (IT) Litigation Support Group assists in the presentation of evidence through the use of TrialDirector, including thousands of potential trial exhibits as well as multiple deposition excerpts.
• Butler Snow has the flexibility to follow a client's established procedures for document discovery and collaboration. We currently access various document management systems at client offices and client data repositories through secure VPN connections. We also work with several third-party internet-based document repositories where this best suits the client's needs.
• We believe an early, aggressive discovery plan is beneficial to the client because of the need to prepare for temporary and preliminary injunction hearings. The injunction hearing phase of the case is crucial because a favorable outcome at this stage often results in a quick resolution of the matter. Therefore we prepare for and treat the hearings as the "trial" of the case.
• Our intellectual property attorneys are well recognized by their peers in The Best Lawyers in America®. They are regularly invited to speak at seminars and roundtables, and the firm regularly hosts intellectual property litigation roundtables for the American Bar Association.