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Services Available
Our Approach
We take a holistic approach to meeting client needs. Our practice is defined by the goals and aspirations of clients, rather than by a rigid set of traditional legal services. We dedicate ourselves to understanding your business, your industry, and the challenges and opportunities you face. Then we assemble a team of the right people with the right knowledge and skills to help you reach your goals, as efficiently and effectively as possible.
What sets Pepper's Technology Practice Group apart from the competition is our skill and experience in resolving the legal and business issues faced by technology producers and technology consumers. Clients have access to all the resources and rich knowledge base of a large, sophisticated firm that has helped businesses succeed for more than 110 years. As your business grows and changes over time, we will tap our deep reservoir of talent in multiple practice areas to keep pace with and anticipate the issues you face.
Services
This is not an exhaustive list of services. Rather, these are some of the more common services the Technology Practice Group provides. For most clients, we offer a blend of services customized according to their needs.
- Capital formation/financing - We help bring venture capitalists and technology entrepreneurs together, and handle all types of equity offerings and other financing methods.
- Commercialization and Technology Transfer - We help clients take technology from the drawing board to the marketplace, including advice on everything from intellectual property protection and equity licensing to rollout strategies, pricing and marketing approaches. A significant part of our work involves technology transfers from universities and other technology incubators to commercial ventures. In these matters, we represent all sides of the process - universities and research institutions that develop technology and license it to industry; start-up companies that license technology from universities and commercialize it; and large corporations in their cooperative research and license agreements with start-up companies and research institutions, including government funded laboratories and the National Institutes of Health.
- Contract negotiation - We draft and negotiate a wide range of commercial agreements, such as software licensing, supply agreements, information technology procurement, maintenance and support, telecommunications, Web development, e-rights licences, etc. We also train client management and staff on contract negotiation skills.
- Corporate - We assist companies with early stage and ongoing governance issues, and in many cases serve as outside general counsel, handling all legal issues as the company matures.
- Data Privacy/Security - We help clients craft data privacy policies and procedures, and negotiate agreements with vendors to ensure compliance. We're particularly skilled in the data privacy and security regulations under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
- E-Commerce - Pepper represents domestic and foreign companies engaged in e-commerce. Our experience spans the gamut from providing advice on basic corporate governance issues, to financing and protecting intellectual property assets, to counseling companies regarding a range of complex commercial relationships with other online companies.
- Employment - We draft and negotiate non-compete, non-disclosure and non-use agreements and design and implement a wide range of employee benefits and executive compensation programs.
- Intellectual Property - We are skilled in patent, trademark, copyright and trade secret protection. Our patent lawyers have extensive backgrounds in chemistry and electrical and mechanical engineering. We're also experienced in helping clients maximize the commercial value of their IP assets, whether it be through licensing agreements, marketing agreements, joint research and development agreements or through mergers and acquisitions of other companies.
- Litigation - We help resolve all types of business disputes, including the use of arbitration, mediation and other forms of alternative dispute resolution.
- Mergers and acquisitions - We negotiate, structure and document mergers, acquisitions, strategic alliances and joint partnerships.
- Outsourcing - Outsourcing is a critical need for many technology companies and "old economy" businesses improving their technological capabilities. We assist with a wide variety of outsourcing arrangements, from single-service matters to entire information systems departments or data centers. In addition to the normal licensing, payment and acceptance issues in outsourcing transactions, we're familiar with the critical data protection and preservation issues that are often involved in these matters. We're also skilled in the employment and tax implications of outsourcing arrangements.
Experience
Pepper has a wealth of experience representing technology companies. That experience includes representing companies that emerged during the technology revolution of the past 15 years or so, as well as older, established businesses that have used new technology to improve their business, or developed new technology products and services themselves. Many companies, particularly emerging or smaller business with little or no in-house legal experience, hire us as general outside counsel, knowing that our long experience and deep "bench strength" in multiple areas will help in dealing with a wide range of legal issues as they arise.
Emerging companies also often look to us for more than just legal advice. We're used to and enjoy mentoring new entrepreneurs, advising them on best business practices and potential pitfalls that we understand well from our experience. (One of our clients refers to its Pepper lawyer as the company's "resident adult.") When you hire a Pepper lawyer, you also gain access to a vast repository of institutional legal and business knowledge, and a large network of valuable business contacts. We want clients to view us as more than just lawyers - we constantly strive to be valued partners and contributors to their success.
Technology matters handled by Pepper include assisting:
- one of the largest affiliate programs on the Web in all corporate matters
- a software development company on intellectual property issues involved in its development of software to provide patient information to hospitals and health care providers over the Internet
- a telemedicine client with confidentiality, privacy and security issues regarding patient identifiable information and usage of aggregate data
- a distributor of specialty gases and welding supplies in a master agreement to consolidate telecommunications, network and Internet infrastructure with a national telecommunications company
- a major provider of Personal Communications Services in arrangements ranging from technology license agreements to equipment purchase agreements to leases and licenses permitting the company to install wireless telecommunications equipment on public and private property
- a manufacturer of computer power supply products in patent infringement litigation based on a portfolio review by our lawyers; the case was settled mid-trial for a $48 million payment to our client
- a publicly traded biotechnology company in connection with the structuring, negotiation and documentation of a comprehensive licensing, research and development and commercialization arrangement with a major international pharmaceutical company relating to a novel antiviral therapy, along with a substantial investment by the pharmaceutical company in the equity capital of the biotechnology company
- a biotechnology company in a coordinated international licensing, research and development program, including the licensing of patents and trade secrets from multiple U.S. and foreign patent holders, the negotiation and documentation of research and development agreements with multiple U.S. and foreign research
- institutions, and the negotiation and documentation of debt and equity financing to fund the research and development program
- a pharmaceutical company in negotiations with a publicly traded biotechnology company to acquire the rights to various potential cancer therapies, and its parent company, in negotiations to create a corporate partnering relationship to support development of a promising cancer therapy and to distribute the resulting products to the world market
- the developer of a new drug delivery system in negotiating license agreements with a major international pharmaceutical company
- an international pharmaceutical company in its acquisition of and license to certain antibodies, intellectual property rights and other related assets
- a privately held biotechnology company in the acquisition of a publicly traded biotechnology company
- Ivy League and other universities and research centers in connection with their technology development and transfer programs, including license and sponsored research transactions, and related equity features
- an international pharmaceutical company in its collaboration with a biotechnology company involving the joint development, manufacturing and marketing of a product designed to treat restenosis
- the largest U.S. health care/biotechnology venture capital fund in more than 250 financing transactions and in the sale of its equity in various public offerings undertaken by its portfolio companies
- one of the nation's largest manufacturers of medical imaging equipment in the formation of a series of joint ventures, including FDA regulatory proceedings, the preparation of licensing and sales agreements, and related intellectual property matters
- a privately held biotechnology company in connection with several joint development, manufacturing, and commercialization arrangements with major pharmaceutical companies
- a privately held biopharmaceutical company in a private placement of convertible preferred stock to institutional investors
- a leading software development company as outside general counsel, handling everything from its venture financing to employee benefits/stock options, its IPO and a second public offering, tax matters, a series of acquisitions to improve market share,
- litigation, and the company's eventual sale to one of the world's largest computing solutions companies
- a software development company in defeating litigation claiming copyright infringement for a key product it developed
- an energy company in enforcing a non-compete agreement signed by an executive who went to a competitor, taking proprietary data with him
- a major U.S. bank in ending - within 36 hours - the framing of much of its Web site content by Russian cyberpirates.
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