If you license out your images, trademarks, or inventions it is important to have license agreements that are effective in protecting your rights.

 

 

 

 

 

Whether you do business around the world, across

the country, or in your hometown, we can help you protect your reputation and build your brand

Every company relies on some sort of intellectual property for its success. Whether it is your company name, your creative products, an invention, or simply information that is unique to your business, the law can help you protect your intellectual property. Sometimes you will know exactly what area you need help with, and other times you may need a little guidance. Not only do you need to protect your own intellectual property, you need to avoid infringing the intellectual property of others. Our attorneys can help you determine what types of intellectual property you rely on, and how to protect them.

 

Copyright Law

Whether you set out to write the next great American novel or simply enjoy painting, your creativity deserves to be protected. Copyright law is designed to ensure that the author of a creative work is able to protect it. Protecting your creative works of art, stories, or daydreams can be a daunting process. Although copyright law protects your creativity from the moment of creation, ensuring that you have adequate legal remedies in the event someone tries to copy or steal your creative works can be tricky. Our attorneys can help you meet the legal requirements to enable you to protect what you have created, help you stop others from taking advantage of your creativity, and help you avoid infringing on someone else's work.

 

Trademarks

Your reputation is one of your business’ best assets. Your customers know you. They trust you. They rely on your good name to provide the products or services that you are known for. Trademark protection ensures that you are able to keep someone else from jeopardizing the good will of your customers or harming your reputation by confusing consumers and copying your hard-earned success. Federal trademark laws help companies that engage in interstate commerce, including businesses that provide products or services to customers and clients from out-of-state, but local businesses may need to look to Virginia law to protect their reputation. Whether you do business around the world, across the country, or in your home town, we can help you protect your business.

 

Our Services

We offer free initial consultations, and many of our services are available at a flat fee you can budget for and rely on.

 

• Consultation for trademark selection and brand development

• CFlat fee trademark registration applications

• CMaintenance and renewal of trademark registrations

• CResearch trademark availability

• CRespond to rejection notices from the USPTO

• CRespond to opposition proceedings

• CTrademark cancellation proceedings

• CTrademark enforcement and monitoring

 

FAQ

• What does a trademark do for my business?

• How do I get a trademark?

• Do I need to register my mark?

• Why should I bother registering my trademark?

• Can I trademark my business’ name?

• How much does a trademark cost?

• Do I even need an attorney?

• How much do your services cost?

• I registered a trademark. Now what?

 

Trade Secrets

Trade secret protection is available for the parts of your business that you rely on to be successful. Whether it is your secret family recipe for barbeque sauce, your list of customers, or your business plan, if the information is valuable to your business you may be able to protect it. Understanding how to protect your trade secrets, how to develop the proper precautions and safeguards, and what to do if someone steals your “secret formula,” can be difficult. Let our attorneys help you figure out the best way to protect the information your business relies on to succeed.

 

Licensing

Many commonly used images and phrases are protected copyrights or trademarks. Ensuring that you have the necessary permission to use copyrighted images, trademarks, or patented inventions and processes can be a vital step in operating your business in such a way as to avoid becoming a defendant.

 

If you license out your images, trademarks, or inventions it is also vitally important to have license agreements that are effective in protecting your rights. We work to ensure that your license agreements clearly define the scope of the agreement in order to protect your rights and facilitate growing your business.

 

 

 

 

Our Services

We offer a wide range of services relating to trademarks, including a free initial consultation to determine what sort of protection best suits your needs. Our combined thirty-plus years of experience, including over twenty years teaching trademark and intellectual property law, allows us to efficiently and effectively provide personalized service for a price few other firms can match.

• TRADEMARK REGISTRATION

• TRADEMARK SELECTION

• TRADEMARK MAINTENANCE

 

Trademark Registration

We offer a wide range of services relating to trademarks, but for most clients what they need is assistance with the trademark application process. The application process can be deceptively simple, or it can be overwhelming complex; it all depends on your mark and your services or product. We start by getting to know your business, understanding your services or products, and helping you assess what registration options are best suited to your needs.

 

Filing a federal trademark registration is a relatively simple process to do for the most basic marks. Trademarks, however, are interpreted strictly according to the information and claims in the application. Having a precise, well-tailored application can enhance your claims, give you broader protection, and give you the best chance of successfully defending your mark against infringing competitors.

 

The attorneys in our firm have been successfully prosecuting trademark applications for decades, and John has been teaching intellectual property law, including trademark law, for over twenty years. We would like the opportunity to work with you on tailoring a trademark application that will give you broad protection for your valuable marks, with the requisite specificity to allow you to defend your brand against infringers. We provide personalized service for your application, not just a simple standard application process for everyone. Since trademark infringement involves not just exact duplication of a mark but extends to confusingly similar words, phrases or images, we not only search for the specific terms you wish to include but for closely related terms as well. This search is designed to provide you with as much information as possible prior to filing for registration in order to minimize the risk of potential problems later on. We also customize the application to fit your business, rather than relying on the pre-populated list of generic descriptions that many applicants use. This individually tailored approach is designed to make sure that the mark you register is well suited to your particular business.

 

Our firm offers a reasonable flat fee for trademark registration applications starting at $500 (plus the USPTO filing fees), although more complicated applications may require a higher fee. We will be able to determine the total cost of the application before we begin, which means you won't have to worry about a surpise fee increase down the road. Unlike many low-cost services, our fee includes not only our services relating to filing the registration application but responding to any procedural requests and office actions from the Trademark Office’s examining attorney. If a third party opposes your trademark registration we would be happy to represent you in those proceedings, but that representation would require an additional fee.

 

Trademark Selection

Selecting the right logo, name, or slogan is important to any business, and we are here to help with every step along the way. Selecting a name requires more than just coming up with something catchy; it also requires coming up with something that is not infringing on another business' trademark rights. Not only will selecting the proper mark help you avoid infringement or unfair competition claims, it will allow you to confidently invest in advertising and marketing by helping you identify what marks are available and eligible for trademark protection.

 

We offer free initial consultations to help you determine what rights you may already have to names, slogans and logos used by your business, and to help you decide what sort of trademark protection you need for your business.

 

Trademarks are not like domain names on the internet; just because the exact mark is not taken doesn't mean that it is available, and you may be infringing if you use a name, phrase, or logo that is too similar to another business offering similar or related services or products. Whether you are about to start a new business, or if you are expanding your advertising, we can help you select a trademark to suit your needs.

 

Trademark Maintenance

Trademark rights last as long as you continue to use the mark in commerce. Trademark registrations do not. Federal trademark registrations have to be renewed periodically in order to verify that they are still in use. If your business misses a renewal period the registration will be cancelled.

 

Since trademarks only need to be renewed every five to ten years it is easy to miss a renewal deadline if your business is not in the business of trademarks. We offer flat-fee trademark renewal services to help ensure that you keep your registration for as long as you use your mark.

 

Trademark Center

Many business owners ask us how trademarks can help protect their company and many lawyers wonder how they can best utilize them for their clients. Therefore, we have assembled some articles below in response to most of their common questions. Of course, if you have any other concerns, you should contact us. We can explain how federal and state laws affect you and what you need to do to protect your business.

 

So what exactly is a trademark?

• What are the different kinds of trademarks?

• How are trademarks different from other forms of intellectual property?

• Why should I get a trademark?

• What are the laws surrounding trademarks?

• What is the trademark process like?

• How do I actually get a trademark?

• How do I know if my trademark is being infringed?

• What can I do if my trademark is being infringed?

• What defenses can people use in trademark actions?

• Can I lose a trademark?

• How much will getting a trademark cost?

• Trademark Facts and Statistics

• Our Firm's Trademark Services