Intellectual Property & Trade Secret Service in Pleasanton

Intellectual Property Audit

You can’t protect your intellectual property (IP) if you don’t know what you’ve got or how to protect it. Whether you’re unsure of what your IP assets are or are concerned that they aren’t adequately protected, we are here to help you. We will audit your business to identify intellectual property assets and assist you in obtaining appropriate protection for your intellectual property, ensure compliance with applicable laws and regulations, and conduct due diligence in connection with mergers, acquisitions, and other corporate milestones.

The identification, proper protective maintenance and inventory of intellectual property assets is key to maximizing the return on this investment. Once the IP assets are inventoried and the existing IP procedures are documented, areas for improvement in both can then be identified and implemented where warranted. These goals can be achieved via a properly conducted and thorough IP audit. While the details of such an audit will be determined by the IP needs of the business, the same framework can be applied to any company.

Intellectual Property Protection

By working with you to implement comprehensive intellectual property protection programs early on and crafting appropriate agreements for use with employees, independent contractors, and third party technology developers, we help to ensure that our clients maximize the value of their IP portfolios. Clients look to us to file patent applications and register their trademarks and copyrights to protect their brands and products and for counsel on their IP licenses and other business contracts. Clients rely upon us for strategic thinking and experienced perspective during the acquisition or sale of any technology. Our goal is to maximize the value of our clients’ IP assets in the face of any third party challenge in court or for valuation purposes.

Trade Secret Protection

From customer lists to your secret formulas, we can help you protect the secrets that give you a competitive edge even when copyright, trademark, service mark, trade name, or patent protection is unavailable. We understand the importance of trade secrets to your business and know how to protect and defend them. We’ll help you put a comprehensive trade secret protection program in place, negotiate and draft license agreements to maximize revenues from your trade secrets, enforce your trade secret rights, and defend you against theft of trade secret claims. If you have been unfairly accused of misappropriating or stealing trade secrets from a former employer, we will develop and execute a strategy to allow you to defeat any unjustified or wrongful claims.

Patents, Trademarks, Trade Names, Service Marks and Copyrights

Whether you are creating a work or licensing someone else’s, buying a business, hiring a freelancer, protecting a database, licensing images, or posting a website, our attorneys work proactively to make sure you own and register the patents, trademarks, trade names and/or copyrights your business depends on. Our attorneys are experienced and up to date in this rapidly evolving area of the law. We give our clients the advice they need to secure their rights, avoid litigation, and maximize their growth.

Services offered to assist you in the creation of intellectual property and trade secrets include:

• Copyright and trademark know-how and technology licensing
• IP and development and distribution agreements
• Patent, copyright, and trademark prosecution, maintenance, and protection
• Privacy and proprietary information policies and programs
• Website and internet counseling
• Intellectual property due diligence and intellectual property audits
• Intellectual property protection
• Patemt, trade secrets, and intellectual property protection counseling
• Technology transfer transactions
• Executive and employee IP protection agreements
• IP and commercial litigation and alternative dispute resolution

Turn Your Intellectual Property Into a Profit Center

Regular intellectual property audits as part of the organizational management audits serve two key functions: the first is to properly manage the risk associated with creating and using intellectual property assets. This requires the company to determine which of its properties are being used by third parties without authorization. This also requires that the company identify which third party properties it may be using without proper authorization.

The second area of the audit can be more rewarding. Here, the focus is on the property owned by the company that has not been exploited at all or, at least, not to its full potential. A thorough audit should help corporate managers identify new opportunities to exploit those assets the company already owns. Through this process, a company can turn so-called corporate liabilities into profit centers.