Intellectual Property Legal Services

Frequently Asked Questions

When should a startup file for trademark protection? Ideally before you launch publicly under the name. A comprehensive trademark search before you invest in branding, marketing materials, and domain names can save significant cost and disruption. We recommend conducting a clearance search and filing a federal trademark application during the formation stage, or as soon as your brand identity is finalized.

How do I make sure my company owns its IP? Three key steps: ensure all founders execute IP assignment agreements at formation, require all employees to sign invention assignment and proprietary information agreements, and include proper work-for-hire and IP assignment provisions in every independent contractor agreement. We draft all of these as part of our startup legal services.

Should I patent my software or keep it as a trade secret? It depends on the nature of the technology, your competitive landscape, and your business model. Patents provide strong protection but are public, expensive, and face significant patentability hurdles for software. Trade secrets are free to maintain, remain confidential, and have no expiration — but offer no protection against independent development or reverse engineering. Many fintech companies use a combination: patents for customer-facing innovations and trade secrets for internal processes and algorithms.

What IP diligence will investors conduct? Investors typically review: chain of title for all material IP (patents, trademarks, copyrights), founder and employee IP assignment agreements, open source usage and license compliance, any pending or threatened IP disputes, and freedom-to-operate analysis for core technology. Having clean IP documentation accelerates diligence and increases investor confidence.

Can I protect my AI model or training data? AI models and training data can be protected through a combination of trade secret protection (for the model architecture, training methodology, and curated datasets), copyright (for original elements of training data, if applicable), and contractual restrictions (in data licensing and employment agreements). Patent protection may be available for novel AI processes, but software patentability constraints apply.