Practice Areas / Intellectual Propery

Intellectual Propery

In today’s economy, technology is changing at the speed of light. As new technological challenges arise, problems must be solved, solutions must be developed, and new innovations must be reduced to practice so that your business remains successful. To fully capitalize on that success, your business needs to protect its intellectual property. Thus, the Intellectual Property Practice Group focuses on the four major aspects of intellectual property (IP) law:

  • Patents.
  • Trademarks and service marks.
  • Copyrights.
  • Trade secrets.

Our business is to help you acquire intellectual property and subsequently protect that property. But we also understand that it’s not enough for us to know our business we must also know yours. Knowing your business enables us to anticipate legal issues, not just respond to them. Assuring your future through the procurement of patents and other intellectual property rights requires us to know more than where your company wants to be. It requires us to know where your company has been, where it is, and where it can be.

Rely on Our Strength

The IP Practice Group has significant experience in a broad range of technical fields—including computers, software, chemistry, manufacturing processes, optics, opto-electronics, telecommunications, and electrical, chemical, mechanical, aerospace, civil, and industrial engineering. The Lanier Ford patent attorneys leverage these technical backgrounds to optimize the strength of your patents and help you achieve your business objectives. Our experience ranges from guiding clients through the patent procurement process and handling complex technology agreements to representing clients before the courts to enforce our client’s intellectual property rights.

Patent Management

The IP Practice Group works with your company’s management to develop strategies for managing your IP portfolio and to assist you in the management of your other intellectual property assets. Lanier Ford maintains a state-of-the-art computer system so that we can monitor pending and existing federal, state, and international applications, registrations, and renewals—for both patents and trademarks. We can help you understand the complete picture of intellectual property planning. At your request, we can watch your competitors and keep you abreast of their activities in the area of intellectual property.

Intellectual Property Services

  • Preparing patent applications for filing in the United States and abroad.
  • Procuring trademarks and copyright registrations.
  • Safeguarding trade secrets.
  • Protecting literary and artistic rights for individuals, non-profit organizations, and businesses.
  • Creating and negotiating licensing agreements to capitalize on your intellectual property assets.
  • Creating and negotiating computer software and technology agreements.
  • Creating and negotiating supply and marketing agreements.
  • Creating and negotiating joint development agreements.
  • Conducting intellectual property audits and due-diligence studies.
  • Enforcing your patent and other intellectual property rights through litigation.
  • Intellectual property strategy development.
  • Internet and other E-commerce issues including domain-name registration and protection.
  • Arbitration and other intellectual-property-related alternative dispute resolution.
  • Providing opinions about the validity or infringement of patents.
  • Litigation representation.

For more information on business-development services, see these practice groups: