Today’s technology-driven, information-based global marketplace requires 21st Century businesses to rethink how intellectual property can boost and protect their bottom lines.  Your competition is doing it. Are you?

Intellectual property is not just patents, copyrights and trademarks. It is about  creating, securing, maintaining, and exploiting every possible competitive advantage in  the marketplace to grow your business. The explosion of a worldwide, information and  technology-driven marketplace has brought on all kinds of new challenges, such as:

• Global protection and enforcement 
• False patent marking suits 
• Patent “trolls” 
• Social media 
• Information and data security 
• Anti-counterfeiting 
• The increased role of IP in business transactions 
• Insurance and risk-management

These challenges are forcing businesses to rethink how they protect and enforce their intellectual property. It is no longer enough to think of intellectual property as 20th  Century “brick and mortar” patents, copyrights and trademarks. A new way of thinking is essential.

Businesses must have a comprehensive intellectual property strategy that reflects all of  the issues that could impact their businesses, both today and tomorrow. By focusing on  creating real value through strategic intellectual property procurement, maximization and  enforcement efforts, your business can create, maintain and secure the competitive  advantage you need to succeed in the rapidly-changing global business environment.

The singular focus of our Intellectual Property Group is to help you stay a step ahead in this complex, evolving marketplace. We provide powerful, cutting-edge legal and business  expertise across all facets of intellectual property law. Moreover, we provide our  world-class legal and business advisory services for the same fees that many of our  competitors charge for basic preparation and prosecution services. In short, we can help you position your business to be in the best possible competitive position to grow.

Our team of experienced intellectual property attorneys delivers a comprehensive range of innovative solutions and insightful industry expertise across a diverse group of technical  disciplines. Our hands-on, in-depth approach enables us to understand and meet the  business goals of our clients. Every client’s needs and goals are different. Our hallmark  is our ability to apply what we learn to dovetail each client’s individual intellectual  property needs with their specific business strategies to achieve maximum success.

Patents

We provide a complete range of patent services within the context of a full-service business advisory and advocacy law firm. From idea to issuance, our registered patent  attorneys assist and advise our clients at every stage of the patent process. In addition,  we perform patent infringement and validity studies and provide non-infringement and product clearance opinions and patentability studies.

Our registered patent attorneys provide services across a wide range of industries and art fields, including:

• Medical devices
• Automotive
• Advanced chemical
• Aerospace
• Computer technology
• Industrial products
• Biochemical
• Electrical
• Energy
• Materials science and polymers
• Consumer products

Our registered patent attorneys have diverse engineering and science backgrounds, including biochemistry, chemistry, biomedical engineering, electrical engineering,  mechanical engineering, and industrial engineering, along with a multitude of industry experiences. Our teams are organized to ensure that each of our client’s needs are met with superior quality of service while providing the appropriate professional for each project.

Branding Strategies and Trademarks

Your branding is a key asset of your business. We work with our clients to help build, maintain and enhance their brands under United States and international law. We prepare, file and prosecute trademark applications around the world, and our skilled team of litigation attorneys handle all aspects of trademark enforcement, including opposition and cancellation proceedings, appeals, and especially complex commercial infringement lawsuits. Perhaps more importantly, we are accomplished at litigation avoidance and can conduct full and preliminary trademark clearance searches, provide clearance opinions, and other litigation avoidance advice to help you avoid problems before they arise.

Copyrights

Whether our clients create artistic and creative works, computer software and digital media, architectural works or other works of authorship, McDonald Hopkins provides a full range of services to secure and protect their copyrights. We prepare and file for copyright registrations with the United States Copyright Office and enforce our clients’ copyrights around the world. We also assist our clients with properly using the copyrighted works of others, and we have extensive experience with all forms of copyright-related transactions, including work made for hire, development, license and transfer agreements.

Trade Secrets

Your business has information that your competitors want. Trade secrets like customer and supplier lists, new product strategies and designs, production processes and formulas, and computer software can be valuable assets that give you a significant competitive advantage. There are times when your technology is better suited to protection as a trade secret than as a patent. We have extensive experience identifying trade secrets and helping clients take the appropriate steps to ensure that their valuable information is protected. We can assist you with development of internal and external policies and procedures, including employment, consulting and development agreements, to ensure that your trade secrets remain secret. And in those cases where, despite your best efforts, competitors misappropriate that information, we have substantial experience with trade secret enforcement under the Uniform Trade Secrets Act, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and other state and federal law regimes.

Litigation and Dispute Resolution

Intellectual property rights do not exist in a vacuum. To have real value, they must be enforced. Often, enforcement can be achieved through licensing and other “nonadversarial” means. But enforcement also requires litigation. For this reason, we are experienced trial attorneys. We aggressively prepare and pursue intellectual property claims in litigation, and zealously defend our clients against claims by competitors, trolls, and others. This requires a unique combination of litigation skills and substantive intellectual property experience that can only be developed through hands-on practice. It also requires a keen focus on our clients’ ultimate goals, including high-level cost/benefit analysis and critical risk assessment and mitigation.

We have successfully represented our clients in a variety of proceedings in forums throughout the United States involving a wide variety of technologies and businesses. Our attorneys have handled appeals, trials, hearings, arbitrations, mediations, and administrative proceedings before the state and federal courts around the country, including the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit; the United States Patent and Trademark Office, including the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences and the Trademark Trial and Appeals Board; and the U.S. International Trade Commission.

Technology Transfer

Not so long ago, intellectual property was often an afterthought in business transactions. But now, a company’s intellectual property portfolio is often its single most important asset. As a result, intellectual property plays a key role in nearly every business transaction, from routine commercial deals to sophisticated licensing and distribution arrangements to large-scale mergers and acquisitions. As a full-service business advocacy and advisory law firm, our intellectual property attorneys are regularly involved in nearly every type of business transaction where intellectual property is being developed, maintained, or transferred. Working with our business attorneys, we regularly perform intellectual property due diligence, chain of title assessments, licenses, rights assignments, development agreements, and all forms of asset and business transfers, including strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions.

Emerging Technologies

From early-stage startups to established companies adapting to a changing world, our clients turn to us for advice and counseling on new and emerging technologies. Often times, the law lags behind technology, leading to risk and uncertainty. Our intellectual property attorneys have been on the leading edge of these changes, helping our clients across a wide range of technologies and disciplines, such as information technology, data security, privacy, user-generated content and social networking, online advertising and e-commerce, electronic signatures, sponsorships and affiliate relationships, domain name registration and dispute resolution, and development of acceptable use policies. While it is impossible to know what new developments tomorrow will bring, we remain on the forefront, providing our clients with the real-time help and insight they need to thrive in the years to come.

Antitrust and Trade Regulation

Our attorneys regularly deal with the trade regulation issues and opportunities that arise in connection with intellectual property transactions and litigation. We understand fully the intersection between antitrust and intellectual property so we can counsel our clients to avoid pitfalls and strategically exploit opportunities as they arise. As the business marketplace becomes even more global in scope, we have kept pace, developing expertise and experience dealing with the intersection of international trade and intellectual property. We have appeared before and worked with the U.S. International Trade Commission and Customs and Border Protection in connection with enforcement of intellectual property rights, country of origin marking issues, and anti-boycotting policies.

International Protection

While we are based in the United States, we help our clients to develop, protect and  enforce their intellectual property worldwide. We have a substantial international practice and have acquired patents and trademarks in a multitude of fields and in nearly every country around the world. We have developed close, long-standing relationships with intellectual property professionals throughout the world to ensure that our clients have access to all intellectual property offices and a host of skilled professionals who can facilitate efficient compliance with each country’s unique requirements. We also represent our clients in disputes involving foreign entities both within the United States and internationally, as well as enforcing our client’s rights at the border.

Portfolio Management

Managing your intellectual property is more important than ever. We provide our clients with a secure, always available “extranet” so they can view and manage their intellectual property portfolios. We also utilize a sophisticated computerized docket system that centers on the Computer Packages, Inc. (CPi) docket platform. Our management system ensures that your intellectual property matters, whether domestic or international in scope, are maintained efficiently and effectively.

Entrepreneurial Company Services

McDonald Hopkins has a long tradition of working with emerging companies. In many cases, intellectual property rights are the most valuable asset of early-stage and emerging companies. We understand the critical importance of identifying and protecting the ideas, inventions, and other intellectual property that set these companies apart from their competitors. We work closely with our early-stage clients to help identify, define, utilize, and ultimately enforce their intellectual property to put them in the best position for long-term growth and success. This includes developing and implementing sound strategies and practices to ensure that our clients are able to take advantage of every benefit arising out of their intellectual property rights. Above all, our attorneys have the specialized expertise that allows us to understand your business — its strengths as well as constraints — and to work within this framework to maximize the opportunities for your long-term success.