INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Trade Secrets
We assist businesses in protecting Trade Secrets such as customer lists, manufacturing processes, business practices, financial information and contracts.
Proprietary Rights
Copyright law protects a work from the time it is created in a fixed form. From the moment it is set in a print or electronic manuscript, a sound recording, a computer software program, or other such concrete medium, the copyright becomes the property of the author who created it. Only the author or those deriving rights from the author can rightfully claim copyright.
There is, however, an exception to this principle: “works made for hire.” If a work is made for hire, an employer is considered the author even if an employee or independent contractor actually created the work. The employer can be a firm, an organization, or an individual.
We assist business owners and employers by drafting Confidentiality and Proprietary Rights Agreements that assign such proprietary rights to owners and employers by expressly classifying such Work Product as Work Made for Hire.
Confidential Information
We routinely draft Confidentiality and Non-Disclosure Agreements for employers to protect vendor information, businesses processes, practices and methods, know-how, internal controls, security and pricing information.
Non-Solicitation
In any business, two of the most important assets are the employees and the customers. Stealing customers and cherry-picking employees can severely cripple a company.
We help our business clients prevent this by drafting Non-Solicitation Agreements. A non-solicitation agreement is a common contract clause that prohibits employees who go work for a competitor from soliciting business clients and employees from their former employer.
So long as the restrictions are reasonable in scope and duration, courts generally enforce these provisions.