Answering Your Questions, Protecting Your Rights
In this day and age, it is hard for a thriving business not to be concerned about issues related to intellectual property (IP). As a business owner, you are either creating your own intellectual property or using someone else's. From our office in Bethesda, the lawyers at Press, Potter & Dozier, LLC, advise businesses and individuals throughout Maryland (including the Baltimore metro area and Western Maryland), Virginia, Washington, D.C., and across the United States in intellectual property matters.
Answering Your Questions, Protecting Your Intellectual Property Rights
Because intellectual property, such as copyrights, trademarks, patents, software, rights of publicity and trade secrets, does not have the physical presence of real estate or personal property, it can be harder to secure and protect from theft, misuse or infringement. Yet, your intellectual property contributes great economic value to your business enterprise. Especially for those in the creative fields of writing, web design, software design, public relations, art, and music, the IP that you create is everything.
As part of the first steps in identifying and protecting your intellectual property, lawyer Barbara Berschler believes that it is important to be able to answer questions like these:
- Who owns the intellectual property?
- What are my obligations with respect to using the intellectual property of someone else?
- How do I go about strengthening my claim to my intellectual property?
- How do I register my trademarks or the copyright in my works?
Barbara Berschler has an in-depth understanding of the issues raised by these questions and can help you reach the answers and craft solutions, whether in the form of a licensing agreement, assignment of rights, use of open-source software, work-made-for-hire agreement, confidentiality agreement, non-compete agreement, consulting agreement, publishing agreement or registration of your intellectual property with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) or Copyright Office. Attorney Berschler advises business owners concerning the best way to identify a strong trademark; how to exploit their IP through licensing agreements; how to contract for the creation of proprietary software, website design and branding; and how best to develop best practices for the protection of the IP.
Barbara Berschler works with software engineers and technology companies in the drafting of their contracts with businesses covering the scope of work, support and maintenance of the resulting software applications, and the incorporation of third party material such as open source modules. Ms. Berschler advises businesses wishing to acquire specially written software so that they end up with software that meets their needs.
Lawyer Barbara Berschler, along with the attorneys at Press, Potter and Dozier, LLC, regularly assists technology companies, individuals and business entities with their day-to-day business operations, whether it is entity formation, commercial lease negotiations, contract drafting and review.
For More Information
We invite you to contact us online or call us at 301-576-0936 (toll-free at 877-209-8759) to schedule an initial consultation. Our lawyers respond to calls and e-mails within 24 hours.
