The Trademark, Copyright and Trade Secret Practice Area offers clients a full range of legal services related to searching, registering, enforcing, and licensing trademarks and copyrights. The practice area also advises clients regarding identification, protection, and licensing of trade secrets. Practice attorneys are active in numerous intellectual property associations and committees locally and nationally.
Trademark
Trademark searching and prosecution of applications for trademark registration are traditional elements of our practice. As a preliminary step to a full availability search, the firm is able to assist clients through online screening searches. For this service, the firm subscribes to SAEGIS, as well as the trademark databases available through LEXIS-NEXIS and WESTLAW. Thus, clients typically have turned to our attorneys for assistance in formulating new trademarks even before seeking clearance approval or opinion letters.
The maintenance of clients' existing trademark registrations, including the filing of Sections 8 and 15 affidavits and renewals, is facilitated through the use of a computerized trademark database system. Not only is the system automated to alert attorneys as to approaching filing dates, it has been designed to merge database records with form documents and letters to provide the most efficient services possible.
For clients with a large number of registrations to maintain, such a system is invaluable. Our practice area handles international trademark matters for many of our clients. We assist clients in determining a strategy for globalization of their brand and related business.
We work on occasion with foreign counsel already employed for other matters by the client. We engage or recommend local foreign counsel with whom we have worked previously and who have demonstrated competence, reliability, accessibility, and attention to our clients' needs.
Members of the practice from both the Litigation and the Business and Finance areas of the firm work together in handling opposition and cancellation proceedings before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Copyright
With the assistance of paralegals who concentrate on trademark and copyright registration and maintenance, we handle the registration of new copyrights for our clients. We also are equipped to search copyrights through the online databases referred to above. We work with clients on licensing, transferring, and perfecting security interests in copyrightable works of all types, including computer software as well as electronic and traditional print publication of text, graphics, music, animation, etc.
Other services
In addition to trademark and copyright, the attorneys in the practice advise clients with respect to protection of trade secrets, unfair competition, and false advertising. We have experience drafting and negotiating licenses, development agreements, nondisclosure, and other agreements for use with research institutions, employees, independent contractors, and other business partners of all types.
The firm is a member of the International Trademark Association (INTA) and has served as host for the INTA's roundtable discussions concerning the right of publicity, trademarks on the Internet, and other intellectual property topics. Our attorneys also are involved in the Cincinnati Intellectual Property Law Association and the American Intellectual Property Law Association, serving on numerous intellectual property-related committees of the Cincinnati Bar Association, the Ohio Bar Association, the Indianapolis Bar Association, the Indiana State Bar Association, the Federal Bar Association, and the American Bar Association
