Intellectual Property Services

LeonardPatel offers a broad range of intellectual property services to accomodate our clients' diverse needs. Our practice includes client consultation, preparation and procurement of patents and trademarks, copyright applications, licensing, appeals, oppositions and cancellations for trademarks, trademark litigation, and patent litigation support. The general categories for our services are:

Patents

LeonardPatel's attorneys represent our clients with respect to procurement, enforcement and licensing of patent rights in all areas of technology. We also attempt to connect innovative startups with investors in order to help them take their business to the next level. Our services include drafting and prosecuting patent applications, conducting patentability searches, patent appeals, licensing and valuation, litigation support, and preparing various opinions.

We assist clients with identifying intellectual property assets and evaluating and prioritizing assets for seeking protection or enforcing existing rights. We also help companies and organizations to develop an effective patent portfolio management system that makes sense for their business and their industry.

Patent prosecution requires extensive interaction with Examiners at the United States Patent & Trademark Office, and we work closely with Examiners to understand their position and to achieve the best possible results for our clients. We emphasize compact prosecution, taking advantage of mechanisms such as in-person Examiner Interviews to move applications through to allowance in fewer iterations. This commitment to efficiency saves our clients time and money.

Trademarks

LeonardPatel has a comprehensive trademark practice. We protect trademarks both domestically and internationally. In the United States, trademarks and service marks can include names, slogans, taglines, designs, logos, characters, colors, and sounds, as well as "trade dress" such as product packaging and product shapes. The U.S. has a three-tiered trademark system of common law, state and federal trademark rights. Consequently, a thorough trademark search can be quite complex. We conduct thorough searches in an attempt to ensure that similar marks do not exist. We assist our clients with both federal and state-level registrations.

Through searches, we can often detect infringers and counterfeiters at an early stage, permitting swift action to prevent the pirating of valuable trademark rights, both in the U.S. and abroad. We also have experience before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board in inter partes actions, such as oppositions, cancellations and concurrent rights proceedings.

Copyrights

LeonardPatel assists clients in protecting copyrightable works under federal law. Copyrights may protect software and works such as art, audio-visual works, architectural works and literary works. While protection under U.S. law arises immediately upon creation and fixation of a work in physical form, timely registration offers advantages such as statutory damages and the possibility of recovering attorney's fees.

Trade Secrets

LeonardPatel recognizes that in some cases, maintaining confidential information as a trade secret may be preferable to intellectual property protections that require full disclosure for protecting sensitive information. We help clients to establish confidentiality procedures, non-disclosure agreements, employment agreements, invention development agreements, manufacturing agreements, licensing agreements, and the like. It is also usually possible to register for a U.S. copyright for computer programs without publicly disclosing any trade secrets. The U.S. Copyright Office specifically recognizes the importance of trade secrets in computer programs and has created regulations that provide for several deposit copy options that involve the submission of only a portion of the entire code. However, some factors to consider include the potential of others to reverse engineer the code for software, the ability to restrict access to the information, and the ability to manage the use of the information. LeonardPatel assists clients in determining whether maintaining information as a trade secret is the best option.