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Intellectual Property Strategy and Protection
The name, the logo, the process, the customer list. Most businesses own more than they have protected.
What You Actually Own
Intellectual property is the collection of intangible things a business owns and can stop other people from using (its name and brand, its creative work, its inventions, and the confidential information that makes it competitive).
Most owners underestimate how much of it they have and overestimate how much of it is protected. Using a name for years does create some rights, but far weaker ones than registration. Paying a contractor to design something does not automatically mean you own it. An employee who developed a process on your time may own it personally if nothing was signed.
The good news is that most of this is cheap to fix while nobody is arguing about it, and expensive to fix afterwards. Registration, assignment agreements, and a clear picture of what you own are among the highest-return legal projects a growing business can undertake.
What We Handle
Trademark registration
Clearance searching, federal and state applications, prosecution through to registration, and the responses in between.
Trademark maintenance
Renewals, declarations, and the monitoring that catches someone else filing something too close to yours.
Copyright protection
Registration and protection for creative work, software, content, and materials you commissioned or created.
IP assignment agreements
Making sure work created by employees and contractors actually belongs to the company. The single most commonly missing document.
Licensing
Licensing your IP to others, or taking a license (scope, territory, exclusivity, royalties, and termination).
Brand protection strategy
What to register, in what order, in which classes, and what to leave alone. Not everything is worth protecting.
Monetization
Turning IP into revenue through licensing, franchising, or as an asset in a transaction.
Cease-and-desist
The letter that resolves most infringement without litigation, and the assessment of whether sending one is wise.
Trade secrets
Confidentiality agreements, access controls, and the reasonable-protection measures the law expects before it will help you.
Sound familiar?
How We Approach It
Protect what earns
Not everything is worth registering. We start by identifying which assets actually generate revenue or advantage, and protect those properly rather than filing broadly and thinly.
Close the ownership gaps first
Registration is worth much less if the underlying ownership is unclear. Assignment agreements with employees and contractors usually come before applications.
Enforce proportionately
Most infringement is resolved with a letter. Some is not worth pursuing at all. We litigate when it is warranted, and we will tell you when it is not.
Who Does This Work
Jordan W Gerheim
Trademark and copyright protection, licensing, enforcement, and brand strategy, alongside intellectual property litigation when enforcement escalates.
Benjamin H. Kilborn, Jr.
IP as a business asset, licensing, distribution, new product lines, and the strategic partnerships built on top of them.
Which Protection Do You Actually Need?
These get used interchangeably and protect completely different things.
Trademark
Names, logos, slogans, anything identifying the source of goods or services. Rights build through use, but registration is what makes them practically enforceable. This is where most businesses should start.
Copyright
Original creative work: writing, design, photography, software, video. Protection exists automatically on creation, but registration is required before you can sue and unlocks stronger remedies.
Patent
Inventions and processes. Requires application and examination, and is the most technical and expensive route. We work with network patent counsel on prosecution, and can litigate infringement ourselves.
Trade secret
Confidential information with commercial value (formulas, methods, customer lists, pricing). No registration exists. Protection depends entirely on whether you took reasonable steps to keep it secret, which is a legal test with a practical answer.
How IP Work Is Billed
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Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to register my trademark, or is using it enough?
Using a mark in commerce does create some rights, but they are geographically limited and much harder to enforce. Federal registration gives you nationwide priority, a public record that deters people who would otherwise adopt something similar, and a considerably stronger position if you ever need to stop someone. For a business planning to grow beyond one market, registration is close to essential.
We paid a designer for our logo. Do we own it?
Not necessarily, and this catches people constantly. Absent a written assignment, the creator frequently retains the copyright even though you paid for the work. You may only have a license to use it. It is straightforward to fix with an assignment agreement, and much less straightforward to fix when the designer has moved on and you are mid-acquisition.
Someone is using a name similar to ours. What can we do?
The first question is what rights you actually have, which depends on registration, priority, and how similar the marks and the markets really are. Most of these resolve with a well-drafted cease-and-desist letter. Some are not worth pursuing. A business two states away in an unrelated field may not be harming you at all. We will tell you which you have before you spend anything.
Do you handle patents?
We litigate patent infringement. We do not prosecute patent applications in-house, because we do not currently have a patent attorney on staff. That work goes through network patent counsel, and we manage the relationship rather than handing you a name. If you have an invention to protect, tell us and we will get you to the right person quickly.
How do we protect a customer list or a process?
As a trade secret, which means there is nothing to file (protection comes entirely from the steps you take to keep it confidential). Confidentiality agreements, restricted access, and clear internal handling all matter, because if it is ever litigated the court will ask what reasonable measures you actually took. A business that treats something as secret only after it is taken usually loses.
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Protect It Before Someone Copies It
Book a Risk-Free Strategy Session. Tell us what you have built and we will tell you what is protected, what is not, and what is worth fixing first.