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Intellectual Property

Protecting your creative capital®

Overview

Caldera Law counsels individuals and businesses with developing, searching, clearing, licensing, protecting, maintaining, and enforcing trademarks, copyrights, and domain names.  While we have strong roots in Miami, Florida, we regularly assist clients throughout the United States and across the globe.

We regularly bring to bear all available contractual tools to protect our clients’ intellectual property. In the course of representing our clients on corporate and transactional matters, we identify and advise on substantive and procedural intellectual property issues. We also have significant experience in the enforcement intellectual property rights including through pre-suit negotiations, administrative proceedings, or litigation.

Our Intellectual Property group is led by Janet Moreira, a Florida Bar Board Certified Attorney and expert in Intellectual Property law, who has earned the prestigious Super Lawyer designation, an honor bestowed upon only 5% of lawyers in the United States.

Trademarks

A trademark is one of the most important assets your business will ever own. Your name, logo, and other visual representations communicate your reputation directly to your customers.  Preserving and protecting your trademark in the U.S. and anywhere your company manufactures, packages, offers services, and/or advertises is critical to your growing business.

At Caldera Law, our trademark lawyers are dedicated to protecting your brand internationally.  We regularly file trademark applications in the United States and abroad (directly, if filing based upon the Madrid System for International Registration of Marks; or alternatively, through our extensive network of foreign counsel). The registration process is intensive and can take up to 18 months from filing to registration. For additional information regarding the U.S. Registration Process, please contact our Intellectual Property team today.

Caldera Law has extensive experience in providing trademark services to its clients — ranging from individuals, to start-ups, to mid-sized and large multinational companies. We regularly deliver all aspects of global trademark strategy counseling, clearance, prosecution, protection, maintenance, and enforcement. We coordinate and manage clearance and registrations with our clients’ in-house legal and marketing teams, and with our network of foreign associates. 

Copyrights

Copyright is a form of protection grounded in the U.S. Constitution and granted by law for original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression. Copyright exists immediately upon creation and covers both published and unpublished works. It protects original works of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works (such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software, and architecture).  It does not protect names, logos, facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation — but may protect the expression of these items.

As a copyright holder, you have a set of exclusive rights, including but not limited to: reproduction, distribution, performance, and display of your copyrighted work. It is important to consider registering copyright in order to establish a public record of your original work, deter potential infringements, enforce your rights through litigation, and recoup statutory damages and attorney’s fees in court. Our Intellectual Property team is dedicated to counseling on copyright issues and protecting your interests in your creative capital. We are available to help clients throughout the US and across the globe, and we frequently help clients in Florida.

Domain Names

The Internet has become the ideal forum for promoting a company’s goods and services, and it has never been more crucial for business owners to protect their intellectual property online. This starts with your domain name, the address of your website, which is of critical importance and substantial value. Caldera Law has developed sound strategies for registering, monitoring, and enforcing your rights in this unique type of intellectual property.

In general, Caldera Law can assist with domain names in three (3) ways:  registrations, transactions, and disputes. Conflicts often arise over ownership of a domain name, since internet addresses are unique. A company that wins the race to registration will be considered the owner, but such acts may constitute trademark infringement. Situations of domain name hijacking and cybersquatting are common.  Whether a company has registered a domain using your trademark or is claiming your website address as its own, our attorneys at Caldera Law can assist.

Brand Development

We understand the importance of brands to your business.  They are the first impression and key identifier in establishing your message to consumers. We also understand the importance of protecting these brands in an international marketplace.

Over the years, clients have approached us to protect their trademarks after they have been developed by their marketing teams. Unfortunately, these brand designs are often not protectable. Our best practice approach combines our legal expertise alongside your marketing team’s methodology, in order to provide a powerful, collaborative service for our clients.

As a collaboration, we discuss and help develop potential marks for your product(s) and/or service(s). We conduct preliminary knockout searches, discuss the advantages and disadvantages of certain marks, research foreign translations (if a global launch or an international product/service is at issue), and present an assessment of potential marks for our client’s review. With early input in the creative process, our clients are able to mitigate the risk of investing money and resources into a weak mark.