Your business’s intellectual property – its trademarks, copyrights, patents, and trade secrets, gives it an irreplaceable competitive advantage in the marketplace, but only if you protect it carefully. That’s where SBS Law PLC comes in. We can devise a comprehensive legal strategy to safeguard your intellectual property that preserves your company’s ability to sell its products and services effectively.
Contact us today for an initial case evaluation with a knowledgeable Grand Rapids business law attorney from our law firm, and learn how we can help you defend your company’s intellectual property rights.
Intellectual property constitutes an intangible asset involving the exclusive right to use a development, such as an invention, creative work, brand name, or piece of proprietary information. Intellectual property is often among a company’s most essential assets, as IP protects a business’s brand image or its ability to produce and sell its unique goods or services.
Intellectual property falls into four categories:
Each category of intellectual property has different laws that govern an IP holder’s legal rights and responsibilities, which is why businesses should tailor their approach to their distinct mix of IP types. The Grand Rapids commercial disputes attorneys at SBS Law PLC can help you develop a legal strategy to protect your company’s rights to all forms of IP it holds.
A trademark protects a company’s exclusive right to use the marks that identify it as the source of its products and services.
Examples of trademarks include:
A company acquires a trademark when it uses a mark in commerce and the mark becomes associated with the company in consumers’ minds, allowing customers or others to identify a product or service bearing that mark as coming from that specific company. Once a business begins using a mark, it can register its trademark with the state or federal government. Registering a trademark at the federal level through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office offers several benefits, including:
A robust trademark strategy should involve more than registering a mark. Instead, it begins with clearance and risk avoidance. The lawyers of SBS Law PLC can help your company create and enforce new trademarks through searches of existing trademarks to ensure your business does not adopt a mark that may appear confusingly similar to another company’s trademark, which could lead to costly and reputation-damaging infringement litigation.
Our law firm can also enforce your company’s trademarks by:
A copyright protects the right of the author of a creative work to display, perform, reproduce, or sell that work.
Examples of works that can receive copyright protection include:
An author gains copyright protection as soon as they put their work in a fixed medium (including in electronic format). Copyright holders can also register their work with the U.S. Copyright Office to gain certain legal benefits, such as:
Businesses can own copyrights, though corporate ownership may also raise complex legal issues. In most cases, companies can own the copyright for works created by their employees and contractors as a “work for hire.” Although works created by an employee within the scope of their employment will usually qualify as works for hire by default, works created by independent contractors may require a specific written agreement to qualify as works for hire.
A patent gives its holder the right to exclude others from making or using an invention, such as a product or process.
U.S. patent law recognizes three types of patents:
An inventor or rights holder must file an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to secure a patent. This is often a complex and arduous process, as the PTO only grants patents to novel inventions that skilled persons would not find an obvious development of existing inventions. Legal counsel can make the patent application process smoother, thus helping your company maximize the duration of the patent and its protections.
At SBS Law PLC, our law firm’s Grand Rapids business agreement lawyers can also negotiate and enforce patent license agreements on your company’s behalf, including contracts to license your business’s IP or agreements that allow your company to use another party’s patents.
State and federal laws can also protect a company’s trade secrets, which refer to confidential and proprietary information that provides a company with a competitive advantage.
Examples of trade secrets include:
A company gains trade secret protection through the act of keeping such information confidential. The legal team at SBS Law PLC can help your business devise a legal strategy to protect your trade secrets, including developing security measures, drafting confidentiality agreements for employees and contractors, and pursuing legal action against misappropriation and potential disclosure of proprietary information.
A well-designed legal approach to managing intellectual property rights can help your business protect one of its most critical assets.
Here’s why you should turn to the Grand Rapids commercial lawyers at the law firm of SBS Law PLC for this critical support:
Are you looking for seasoned counsel to help you assert your business’s rights regarding its IP? If so, contact SBS Law PLC for a confidential consultation with an experienced intellectual property attorney in Grand Rapids, MI. We look forward to sitting down with you to learn more about your needs and how we can help you meet them.
