Licensing/Intellectual Property

The lawyers of the law firm of Burk & Reedy, based in the Denver regional office, represent clients in licensing and sale of software and sale or purchase of computer hardware, as well as provide services in registering copyrights and trademarks.

Licensing Negotiations. What makes this law firm standout in this area of law is experience in assisting sales personnel with direct customer contract negotiations, as well as very substantial negotiating experience in software license, technology and service agreements. This allows the law firm to be of great assistance to your I.T. team as well as its sales and business development team, as we know good initial contract offers to make to the vendor or customer, as well as fallback contract terms, and can draft terms that appear attractive to the other side but yet have minimal adverse impact on the client, creating a win-win situation. Preparing for contract negotiations begins with a clear understanding of our client’s wants as well as our client’s needs, so we know what terms to push for versus what terms can be compromised. We also work to see the real needs of the other side that lie behind its initial contract demands, and bring both sides together. Having a very good understanding of the computer hardware and software technologies assists us in drafting or reviewing requests for proposals and contracts.  Our lawyers actually enjoy reading statements of work, and revising them with our client to make sure the terms are clear and my client will get what he or she is wanting.

By being part of your technology team from the start of substantial projects, we can write the documents that reduce the time to get RFP’s written or responded to and contracts negotiated. Inexperienced I.T. attorneys can cause delays that cost clients potential sales or result in poor contractual terms that increase costs or create disputes with the other side after the contract is signed, hurting the reputation and future sales of the client. Our goals in contract drafting and negotiating are to protect our client, work to close the sale if reasonable terms can be agreed to, and produce contracts that both sides can live with after they are signed and will want to continue to do business together for years to come.

Copyrights.  If you hire a third party contractor to write software code for you or to design your website, who owns the result.  It may surprise you that you may not own it without express language in your written contract. This law firm can negotiate your contracts to help assure you of ownership.  Furthermore, if you write software code, you should consider registering your copyright on that code to better protect your ownership in that code.

Trademarks. Your business may use names and logos that should be protected from use by competitors.  We can investigate to see if you can get a trademark and then register your business name, slogan and logo. 

Patenting your invention. The law firm of Burk & Reedy has affiliate or “partnering” relationships with other attorneys and law firms throughout the United States in such areas as patenting inventions. Patenting is vital to protecting your invention, but to make money from your invention, you need to consider licensing or selling your patent rights.  Our law firm can assist in those areas.

 Contact us today to patent your invention.