Plan, Protect, Maintain

Intellectual property is the most important asset for most companies today. With the offshoring of many services and manufacturing functions overseas, intellectual property is often the decisive factor that keeps competitors at bay and provides a business space that allows a business to thrive. As a result, businesses should create an intellectual property plan, protect its intellectual property assets, and maintain that plan and those assets. At Yarbrough Blackstone, we work to help our clients implement each step. As attorneys registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, we are suited to counsel clients regarding and obtaining patents, trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets here in the United States, and through our affiliates overseas, this protection in select foreign markets.

Plan...

We work with our clients to develop intellectual property plans to protect, maintain, and maximize their intellectual property. We effectively act as external-internal counsel and examine the possible intellectual property issues from an inside-out perspective. This plan will be focused on the short and long-term objectives of the company to serve the business goals of the company. The depth of planning will be determined by the scope requested by the client and the associated budget, but will typically include examining patent, trademark, copyright, social media, and trade secret. Once this evaluation has been performed, we work with a client to develop a plan to protect any potential intellectual property assets and how to maintain them. If possible, we will also develop an intellectual property monetization plan. As with all of our services, we have a number of fixed fee and subscription plan models that we can provide in addition to traditional hourly rates.

Protect…

Protecting IP assets can be a time consuming and expensive process. We work with our clients to optimize their intellectual protection budgets and provide cost-effective protection of intellectual property via patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets. We can provide patent, copyright, and trademarks, as well as protection schemes to ensure protection of your trade secrets. We have several innovative pricing schemes such as our Lifetime Patent scheme. Our goal is to function as your external-internal counsel and proactively identify and protect key assets and innovations from your company as you develop them. As with all of our services, we have a number of fixed fee and subscription plan models that we can provide in addition to traditional hourly rates.

Maintain.

Maintenance of intellectual property is the ongoing effort to maximize both the value of an organization's intellectual property and the effectiveness with which it is enforced. As external-internal counsel, our goal is to perform the active maintenance and monitoring of your company's intellectual property. Our goal is consistent and timely contact with your organization to ensure that your current protection matches your current business goals and adequately protects your product roadmap. Fully protecting your existing intellectual property involves an active process that ensures that competitors cannot capture or diminish your intellectual property assets. Management of patents requires actively monitoring how changes in patent law effect the value of granted patent claims, and continuing to keep patent applications alive to allow new claims to be drafted to address changes in case law, competitor products, and your own products. Trademarks require active searches of potential infringers or facing the risk of losing a trademark. Copyright additionally requires active monitoring of the marketplace to ensure that copying of your copyrighted material does not occur. Trade secrets require detailed protection schemes that require ongoing monitoring and audits to ensure compliance with those schemes. Yarbrough Blackstone offers each of these services with a number of fixed fee and subscription plan models that we can provide in addition to traditional hourly rates.