Intellectual Property Law
TRADEMARKS AND BRAND MANAGEMENT
COPYRIGHT LAW
If you produce original works of creative expression, be it poetry or pornography, that is the fruit of your labor, and you have a right to control how it is used and to make money off of it. Our attorneys will guide you through protecting your creative works and enforcing your rights (if necessary).
Your works are copyrighted the moment you make them. However, if you fail to register them with the U.S. Copyright office, you can’t enforce your copyright. If you register your works before someone steals them, you can be eligible for statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringed work as well as your attorneys’ fees. Unfortunately, if you haven’t registered your work before the infringement happens, the most you can get is damages you have actually suffered from the infringement and an injunction from the court — an order telling the infringer to stop and not do it again. This is a small consolation to most victims of copyright infringement.
Copyright disputes often intersect with the First Amendment, since people have a legal right to make fair uses of copyrighted works. We have significant experience dealing with this intersection and the often fuzzy boundary between fair use and copyright infringement. Whether you are being sued for copyright infringement over a fair use or dealing with an infringer who claims they are making a fair use of your work, we can help you.
We give all of our clients a comprehensive lesson on copyright infringement, how to combat it, how to detect it, and how to prepare for an enforcement action before it begins. There are a lot of content thieves out there, and our expertise can help you strategically protect your creative assets from theft before it occurs.
TRADE SECRETS
Trade secrets are a murky and potentially changing area of intellectual property law; the use of the word “secret” reveals just how difficult this area can be for courts and the parties involved. Essentially, trade secrets are the processes, techniques and models used to make your business great.
Thus, we offer counseling to ensure your trade secrets remain secret, and investigate whether others have found them through espionage or other improper means. If litigation is needed, we are prepared to show how your intellectual property rights were violated by a competitor. Similarly, if challenged, we are able to represent you and show that your success arises from smart business practices, and not the theft of someone else’s ideas.
PATENTS: COUNSELING, LICENSING, AND LITIGATION
Patents are a bargain made between inventors and the state. In exchange for disclosing your invention to the public, in the form of a patent application, you can get a number of years in which you have the exclusive right to exploit that invention. This can be a powerful tool for inventors, but sometimes inventors are not the best people to exploit the invention commercially. In that case, you may want to sell or license the patent. We can assist with that.
Patents can be a tool for innovation, but they can also be used anti-competitively and to stifle innovation. So-called “patent trolls” (better referred to as “Non Producing Entities”) seek to extract a payment from innocent parties, based on questionable patents. In cases like that, we enjoy helping our clients get in the way of such anticompetitive behavior.
INTERNATIONAL INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
In a global economy, international intellectual property protection is a consideration for large and small companies alike. In order to serve the firm’s clients on a global level, Mr. Randazza spent a year earning an LL.M. degree in International Intellectual Property law from the Università degli Studi di Torino. This prestigious program gathers intellectual property lawyers and scholars from all over the world and, in a program sponsored by the World Intellectual Property Organization, gives them a global overview of IP rights, international enforcement and protection, and the interplay of local laws and treaty obligations. During this program, The Randazza Legal Group forged strategic alliances with law firms world wide, so that we are no more than one call away from colleagues in dozens of countries, so that we can rapidly shore up your IP rights, or rapidly engage in litigation to protect them.
We have leveraged our experience in and connections with foreign intellectual property offices and attorneys to expand the scope of our clients’ intellectual property protections beyond the U.S. Infringers are not just domestic, and we know how to ensure that your rights are protected in the world’s largest economic areas.
I believe in intellectual property. In my view, it's the foundation of world economies.
