Most forms of property are things you can hold and move around, selling them to others (the law uses the boring word “chattel” to classify these goods). Other property is land you can own and convey (“real property” here). Yet there’s another phase of property: the stuff you create in your mind. This intellectual property is just as valuable as chattel or real property, and for many businesses, creating, holding and controlling this intellectual property is the entire core of their business.

Trade Secrets

The government registers and protects some forms of intellectual property (described below), but the rest exist as secrets that a company holds and protects. Just like the recipe for a secret BBQ sauce, companies can and do concoct their own way of doing things that offer a competitive advantage to other companies, and the law affords certain protections and remedies such these secrets become breached. Life Law Partners can assist in identifying and protecting these trade secrets to equip your company with as many advantages as it can conceive.

Copyrights

A copyright is a protection afforded to written and creative work, such as a written report, a song, a motion picture or a website (like this one). Life Law Partners can assist in identifying, marking copyrightable works (the © symbol) and protecting these assets, ensuring that the work you create and publish stays within your control and to your attribution.

Trademarks & Servicemarks

We’re constantly surrounded by trademarks and servicemarks. Even you, looking at this screen right now, probably have several trademarks within your periphery: the laptop or desktop logo that’s likely beneath this very screen, the stamp on the side of the pen sitting on your desk, the color combination of the candy wrapper sitting in your treat jar and even the shape of the cola bottle in the recycling bin nearby (yes, literally just the shape of the bottle). Life Law Partners can assist in protecting these assets, including an initial analysis on whether a planned mark is protectable. Once identified, we can assist with pre-application marking (the ™ symbol), current-use searches and, finally, the formal application process to enable you to use the registered trademark notation (the coveted ® symbol).

Patents

We’ll be frank and admit that patents are a bit over our pay grade as they require specialized backgrounds to do well. Yet we have a stable of patent partners we turn to often, and Life Law Partners can assist in making these connections in a way that is seamless with the other representation we provide you.

Enforcement

Having intellectual property and government-sanctioned protections won’t always be enough to ward off potential infringers. It is up to each holder to protect its own intellectual property, and the law’s use-it-or-lose-it stance on intellectual-property enforcement puts the burden of stopping infringers on no one but yourself. Life Law Partners can assist in protecting registered intellectual property through cease-and-desist letters or formal enforcement actions if warranted.