See list of exemplary services/representations that Mike and Dustin have provided their clients over the years:
- Commercial Litigation (TROs, injunctions, breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, fraud, etc.)
- Copyright Litigation
- Copyright Registration
- Cybersecurity and Data Privacy
- Cyber Insurance Coverage Disputes
- Intellectual Property Due Diligence Assessments
- Intellectual Property Indemnification Litigation and Counseling
- Intellectual Property Licensing
- Intellectual Property Transfer Agreements
- Open Source Software Compliance
- Patent Infringement and Validity Opinions
- Patent Preparation and Prosecution
- Patent Litigation
- Patent Reexaminations, IPRs, and CBMs
- Trademark Litigation
- Trademark Registration and Prosecution
- Trademark Matters before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board
- Trade Dress Litigation
- Trade Secret Misappropriation Litigation
- Unfair Competition Litigation
Trademark Portfolio FAQs
Almost certainly. Trademark attorneys often recommend multiple federal registration classes and foreign trademark registrations that simply make no commercial sense, and all of these end up imposing immediate and ongoing costs for the client to maintain trademark registrations that provide zero value to the client. Trademark attorneys also regularly recommend extensive, expensive, and unnecessary “clearance searches,” which generally result in an inconclusive answer, but significant money transferred from the client to its trademark law firm.
Yes. See Trademark Patent Prices - RegitzMauck, PLLC for flat fees for common trademark prosecution and opposition/cancellation services.
RegitzMauck uses a cost-effective third party to provide these services and then RegitzMauck bills a nominal monthly fee to review the relevant reports and identify issues to the client as they arise.
No. It’s a fairly standard process that is largely automated by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Your current lawyer may try to charge you to “gather and transfer the files,” but that is just a billing tactic. It’s extremely uncommon for your current law firm to have anything of value in its files.
Copyright Infringement Litigation FAQs
Yes, but it may not make sense to do so. Your company owns the copyright in any original work of authorship as soon as it becomes fixed in a tangible medium of expressing (e.g., recorded on a computer file, written down, etc.). If someone infringes your copyright, you can sue them in federal court even if you didn’t register the copyright beforehand, though you will have to register your copyright before you sue them. However, if you registered the copyright before the infringement, you are eligible to recover attorneys fees and statutory damages, which can make filing a lawsuit economically feasible, especially if significant commercial damages are involved.
RegitzMauck will handle copyright infringement cases on a contingent basis depending on its assessment of liability and damages, though we are unlikely to do so in cases where the infringement occurred before the work was registered with the U.S. Copyright Office. In cases where the copyright was registered after the infringement, RegitzMauck can cost-effectively represent clients on an hourly basis.
When faced with a copyright infringement lawsuit, the nature of the alleged infringement often dictates whether the ultimate resolution will be difficult and expensive or relatively cheap and easy. When liability is clear (e.g., the content is not yours and you don’t have a license to use it the way you did), it is difficult to extricate yourself from the lawsuit while the copyright owner’s lawyers explore damages. At that point, the plaintiff uses the pressure of legal fees, some of which are required (i.e., if you got sued in federal court, you can’t just ignore the lawsuit), to force a settlement. Your primary objective then becomes to minimize legal fees and settle the case for as little as possible. Unlike RegitzMauck, many law firms have no intention of minimizing legal fees once they get retained.
Breach of Contract Litigation FAQs
Most litigation attorneys and law firms will handle breach of contract cases, but your selection of legal counsel to represent your company should be based, at least in part, on the technology involved in the case. For example, if you have a contract dispute over the failed implementation of highly sophisticated software, it is a decided advantage if your lawyers have the technological wherewithal to fully comprehend the scope of potential reasons for the implementation failure. RegitzMauck attorneys are registered patent attorneys who are experienced in litigating highly technical cases and who bring a level of technological understanding to your breach of contract case than may mean the difference in winning or losing your case.
Trademark/Trade Dress Litigation FAQs
Maybe. You don’t need to register a trademark to have trademark rights in the United States. Though there are benefits of federally registering your trademark, trademark rights arise from use of distinctive marks in commerce. If you have trademark rights in your brand, you can enforce those rights in state and federal court.
Trademark cases are often expensive to litigate and damages can be difficult to prove. We generally tell our trademark owner clients that their objective should probably be to force the other side to stop using their trademark, which can often be accomplished before the parties have expended too much money. Of course, a wide range of damages are available in the right circumstances. However, this is rarely the type of legal action that will lead to a substantial damages award.
Your response largely depends on the situation, the nature of the trademark infringement claim, and your resources. Sometimes it makes sense to ignore the letter. There’s nothing special about a cease and desist letter coming from a lawyer with an arbitrary response deadline – unless ignoring the letter will lead to a lawsuit or some other escalation. Other times, it makes sense to respond in some fashion to contest the allegations or take a firm position against the claims in a manner that will not be misunderstood. The scariest sounding cease and desist letters often have the weakest legal claims and factual support.
If you’ve been sued in federal court for trademark infringement, you need an experienced trademark lawyer to represent your company. RegitzMauck lawyers have handled trademark/trade dress infringement cases in federal courts across the country. You might naturally think that it makes sense to retain a lawyer where the lawsuit was filed. However, this is often not the best or most economical decision. Since COVID, many judges handle hearings, if any, over Zoom or Teams, and it is common for parties to appear in the courtroom for the first time for trial. So, for example, hiring a high-priced San Francisco lawyer to represent you just because the case was filed in San Francisco can end up costing you (a lot) instead of saving you money.
Quite possibly. You will want to immediately contact your insurance company and make a formal claim if you think coverage may exist. These policies are often lengthy, complicated, and even vague about what the policy covers (not to mention all of the exclusions). RegitzMauck can assist you in determining whether coverage exists. Commercial insurance policies often provide coverage for “advertising injuries” where the insurance carrier will pay for your legal defense, settlement amount, or assessed damages. Of course, sometimes insurance carriers wrongfully deny coverage, so RegitzMauck may need to take action against the insurance company in the context of the infringement lawsuit or in a separate action to “encourage” the insurance carrier to do the right thing for their insured.
Patent Litigation FAQs
If you’ve been sued in federal court for patent infringement, you need an experienced patent lawyer to represent your company, and Dallas-based RegitzMauck is especially qualified to represent you if your case was filed in a Texas federal district court. RegitzMauck attorneys are registered patent attorneys and have represented clients accused of patent infringement in every federal court in Texas.
You probably won’t be able to accurately assess the seriousness of the situation on your own, but the attorneys at RegitzMauck have been doing this long enough that we can accurately assess the situation. If it’s a nuisance suit in which the plaintiff is offering to settle for less than the legal fees will cost the defendant, RegitzMauck will immediately implement a plan to extract the client from the lawsuit for the minimum settlement value and with minimum legal fees incurred. If the lawsuit is more serious than that, we work with our clients to develop a tailored litigation strategy in their best interests.
First, you need an experienced patent lawyer to confirm infringement and perform a damages assessment. Determining patent infringement is a complex assessment. RegitzMauck attorneys are registered patent attorneys and have represented clients in federal court patent infringement actions across the country. Second, if you determine that the patent infringement is actionable, there are a range of options available depending on your circumstances (e.g., commercial objectives, company resources, importance of removing infringing product from relevant marketplace), and you need to implement the course of action that achieves your company’s objectives in the most cost-effective manner.
Patent FAQs
First you need to determine whether your invention is patentable. After discussing the invention with you, RegitzMauck will usually refer you to a third-party searching company to provide you with a “patentability search.” If the results of that search indicates that your invention may be patentable, we can discuss patent strategy at that time. See Trademark Patent Prices - RegitzMauck, PLLC for flat fees for common patent prosecution action items.
Intellectual Property Indemnification FAQs
If you think your vendor owes you an indemnification obligation based on a contract provision or just in general (e.g., under the Uniform Commercial Code), you will often need to make a timely and formal claim pursuant to the terms of the agreement for the indemnifying party to indemnify your company and provide your company with a legal defense. Although indemnification provisions can appear clear with respect to coverage, that is rarely the case. You need an experienced indemnification attorney to review the provision. RegitzMauck attorneys have handled many intellectual property indemnification matters and the applicable language is often the difference between being fully indemnified for millions of dollars and being on your own. RegitzMauck can counsel you on indemnification language to add to your contracts, defend against wrongfully asserted indemnification claims, or compel hesitant indemnitors to satisfy their obligations through persuasion or litigation.
As with any contract, if one party refuses to satisfy its obligations under the contract, it is in breach of that contract, which can be enforced in a court of law. Where and how enforcement of an indemnification obligation will occur may be determined by the contract itself (e.g., a mandatory arbitration provision, which RegitzMauck never recommends in contracts between commercial entities). If judicial enforcement is available, your options will generally be to immediately implead your vendor into the case or to wait and see how the case is resolved and deal with your vendor in a separate action once you have a total cost associated with the original lawsuit.
The scope of indemnification obligations usually depend on the contractual language at issue. In the context of a lawsuit, you will generally compare the scope of the indemnification obligation (e.g., vendor will indemnify customer for ______ claims asserted against customer by a third party) with the claims asserted in a lawsuit. So if the claims asserted match the indemnification obligation, you may be on the hook to indemnify your customer and maybe even pay for their legal defense. However, if the claims asserted do not match the indemnification obligation, you can rightfully deny your customer’s demand, though vendors often step up to take control of the defense even if they are not legally required to do so. Business justification can often warrant diverging from legal realities. Analyzing patent infringement indemnification obligations can be particularly complicated and subject to dispute.
Fraudulent Website Takedowns FAQs
There are a number of methods that can be used to get a fraudulent website taken down. many of them dependent on the content, if any, that has been put up on the website. These methods include issuing DMCA takedown notices to the domain registrar or hosting provider (when copyright infringement is evident), filing complaints with the domain registrar or hosting provider when the content runs afoul of their policies (e.g., designed for phishing), and initiating a Uniform Domain-Name Dispute Resolution Policy proceeding (UDRP). Usually an escalating approach is recommended, though convincing a sketchy domain registrar in a foreign country to do the right thing is often a futile enterprise that can be skipped. The UDRP provides the formal venue where transfer of an unlawful domain is practically assured, but it is also the most expensive course of action (other than a federal court action) that includes significant filing fees (e.g., Standard WIPO UDRP Filing Fee for 1-5 Domain Names, Single Panelist = US $1,500.00).