Jake L. Bryant

Jake Bryant is a member of the firm’s General Commercial group. His practice focuses on intellectual property protection and litigation, technology development and contracting, data privacy compliance and litigation, branding and media rights, trade secrets, rights of publicity, and corporate matters. He helps clients at every stage of the IP life cycle, from initial development, to registrations and licensing, to infringement litigation.

As a trademark and copyright attorney, Jake represents clients in intellectual property infringement litigation and other disputes involving complex IP ownership. He helps clients protect their IP through registrations, licensing, and regularly assists with contracting related to emerging technologies, including software and generative artificial intelligence. He also regularly works with clients on privacy policy development, data breach responses and compliance, and disputes related to data privacy and tracking technologies. Prior to joining Gentry Locke, Jake served as Of Counsel at a boutique intellectual property law firm, where he helped litigate intellectual property issues in various federal courts across the U.S., and as a research assistant for the Center for Intellectual Property x Innovation Policy (now the IP Policy Institute).

Jake earned his J.D. from Liberty University School of Law, where he served as Notes & Comments Editor of the Liberty University Law Review, Vice President of the Liberty Law Intellectual Property Clinic, Executive Chair of the Business & Transactional Law Society, and was a national finalist in the 2023 Saul Lefkowitz Moot Court Tournament hosted by the International Trademark Association. He received his LL.M. in Intellectual Property from the George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School, focusing on artificial intelligence and law & economics. Jake’s published scholarship explores the intersection of intellectual property and emerging technologies.

A quick handshake

•What is your favorite thing about your job?

It is a privilege and honor to work with clients in protecting their intangible assets and to guide them through the deals and disputes that shape their businesses. My favorite word for an attorney is “counselor.” The word best encapsulates what we do: advise our clients on the ethics, legalities, and economic factors that play into major decisions.

•What is your favorite thing to do when you’re not working?

I love photography, golf, reading, and film. I am an avid movie-watcher, anything from classics (Casablanca is a personal favorite) to science fiction or dramas. I am a huge fan of the authors Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Tolkien, and Norman Maclean, as well as the Irish musician, Dermot Kennedy. My great passions, however, lie in photography and fiction writing.

•What life lesson do you think we all should follow?

Pursue righteousness. The ends rarely justify the means and too many things affect our outcomes in life. The best thing we can do is try to live with good intentions and act justly with what we can control. If we remain stalwart in the endless pursuit of loving and living well, peace usually finds us.

Experience

•Trademark and copyright infringement litigation
•Managed the registration, maintenance, or development of over 400 federally registered trademarks
•Office actions and appeals with the USPTO and Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (T.T.A.B.)
•Copyright registrations, DMCA enforcement
•Litigated and helped to favorably resolve various intellectual property, technology, non-compete, and website-oriented ADA disputes in districts across the 4th, 7th, 9th, and 11th
•Technology, IT, and SaaS contracting
•Development and termination of IT managed and cloud-based services agreements
•Agreements covering the development and integration of large language models and other forms of generative artificial intelligence.
•Privacy policy development, audits, and data breach response
•Branding and entertainment
•Media rights deals, rights of publicity
•Trade secrets and unfair competition
•Assisted with the development, facilitation, and execution of multimillion dollar equity and asset acquisition deals

Speaking Engagements

•F aculty and Speaker , Virginia State Bar 46th Annual Construction Law and Public Contracts Seminar 2025. Topic - “The Effects of Copyright and Trademark Law on the Construction Industry.”
•F aculty and Speaker , 2025 Gentry Locke Seminars. Topic - “Anatomy of a Trademark: Helping Clients Fortify their Brands and Avoid Infringement”

Published Work

•Author, A new trademark catfight: Puma opposes Tiger Woods’ Sun Day Red trademark application, The Trademark Lawyer (January 2025).
•Author, Auctorem Ex Machina: A Case for Human Copyright Authorship in Works Created Using Generative Artificial Intelligence, AIPLA Quarterly Journal (October 2024).
•Contributor, Commentary in Response to the Official Inquiry of the U.S. Copyright Office Regarding Copyright and Generative AI, American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA) (October 2023).
•Author, Dancing in the Dark: Exploring the Collision of Copyright with NFTs & the Works They Represent, 17 Liberty University Law Review 71 (September 2022).

Library

•Trademark Scams on the Rise in 2026
Articles
Apr 2026
•President Trump Issues Executive Order Targeting Cybercrime: What Businesses Should Know
Articles
Mar 2026
•Publicly Available vs. Public Domain: When Are Copyrighted Works Free To Use?
Articles
Jan 2026
•Executive Order Targeting State AI Regulation Shakes Up State Enforcement
Articles
Dec 2025
•Five Ways Your Business is Probably Affected by Intellectual Property Law
Articles
Oct 2024
•Reviewing Copyright & Generative AI: The Good, the Bad, and the Unanswered
Articles
Jul 2024
•Virginia’s Right to Privacy and its Impacts on Marketing
Articles
Jul 2024
•What’s in a Name: Supreme Court Upholds Constitutionality of Federal Trademark Statute Against Free-Speech Claims in Vidal v. Elster
Articles
Jul 2024
•Gentry Locke Welcomes Intellectual Property and Business Law Attorney Jake L. Bryant to its Roanoke Office
News
Jun 2024