Agreements

From the initial conception of inventions through the process of monetizing them, contractual relations are intimately intertwined with intellectual property rights. At each stage in the process, Hamilton Brook Smith Reynolds attorneys have the expertise to construct the contractual arrangements necessary to secure and protect the value of clients’ intellectual property rights.

Different issues of technology ownership arise from the different relationships in which inventions are made, whether by employees, consultants and outside contractors, joint venturers, or collaborative research and development partners. Our firm’s attorneys are sensitive to the pitfalls that can be encountered in these various situations and carefully craft clients’ relationships from the outset to clarify and protect their rights through non‑disclosure agreements, employee invention disclosure and assignment agreements, consulting agreements, non‑competition agreements, and research collaboration and joint development agreements.

Our firm’s attorneys also guide clients with the technology transfer agreements that are often the key to successful commercialization of inventions. License agreements, complex assignment transactions, and material transfer agreements are just a few of the different commercial relationships that our attorneys have helped clients create to protect and secure the commercial benefits of technology.

Similarly, when disagreements are encountered over intellectual property rights, whether they involve patents, trade secrets, trademarks, or copyrights, the firm’s attorneys have expertise in guiding clients in contractual arrangements designed to resolve the disagreements without litigation. Mediation and arbitration agreements, trademark concurrent use agreements, common interest agreements and invention priority agreements are a few examples of the arrangements that our attorneys have used creatively to resolve disagreements short of litigation. The potential of having to face the firm’s strong litigation capability is often the key to bringing disagreements to a negotiated resolution.