Intellectual Property

When clients are facing contentious matters involving technology and intellectual property, they turn to Hughes Hubbard’s Intellectual Property team. Our priority is to achieve the most favorable outcome for our clients’ business, whether that means negotiating an early settlement, going to trial and appeal, or guiding them through complex arbitrations and mediations.

We are known for coming up with creative solutions to our clients’ problems—including, when necessary, solutions that have changed the law. Our ability to craft unique solutions, coupled with our extensive experience in a wide variety of technical fields, provides our clients with unparalleled counsel.

Our team’s adaptability and strategic thinking is the result of its diversity and deep experience. Our attorneys hail from a wide array of backgrounds and include law professors, molecular biologists, casebook co-authors, and engineers. Coupled with our strategic problem-solving, our breadth and depth of experience makes us a leader in intellectual property matters.

Patent Litigation

Our deep bench of trial lawyers with technical backgrounds, advanced degrees, and industry experience provides the necessary insight to help clients defend against sophisticated claims in an array of industries and technologies.

We try patent infringement cases before juries, judges, and arbitrators. We represent clients in end-to-end, strategic disputes with their most aggressive competitors, and our lawyers are often called upon to right the ship in high-stakes cases. We have extensive experience trying cases in district courts and venues all over the country, including the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the International Trade Commission (ITC), the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, and the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.

IP Arbitration & Mediation

We have represented clients in arbitrations and mediations related to Intellectual Property. Our team helps protect our clients’ interests in disputes involving trademark, copyright, trade secret, patent licensing and other disputes in courts and administrative agencies throughout the U.S. and abroad. The team has experience in both trials and appeals and has an excellent track record. We work closely with our clients to develop effective strategies and provide a compelling narrative.

Trademarks

Our lawyers who specialize in trademark law, coupled with our pre-eminent litigation and corporate practices, enable us to expeditiously and efficiently handle the most contentious trademark matters for our clients. Our dedicated attorneys are well-versed and handle all aspects of trademark law, including the selection, clearance, use, and protection of service marks and trademarks; trademark opposition and cancellation proceedings; anti-counterfeiting investigations and enforcement; and trademark and trade dress infringement litigation.

Brand Protection and Anti-Counterfeiting

We have represented clients in federal courts and the International Trade Commission in connection with trademark, trade dress, unfair competition, and Lanham Act claims. Our attorneys have successfully obtained preliminary and permanent injunctions against infringers relating to the sale of goods bearing infringing marks, trade dress and packaging.

In addition, our attorneys have extensive experience working with clients to develop and implement a brand protection strategy, and coordinating a network of investigators and law enforcement to pursue individuals and entities trafficking counterfeit goods, including through online sales and under infringing domain names. We have worked with clients to devise creative strategies to combat sophisticated counterfeiters based in foreign jurisdictions, who operate in ways designed to avoid detection, with one such strategy being to work with payment service providers to prohibit the use of their services to process payments for the purchase and sale of counterfeit goods and pirated content.

Copyrights

Our attorneys offer the complete scope of services necessary for applying for, enforcing, licensing, buying and selling copyrights and copyrighted works. Our copyright practice spans the areas of literary works, music and video delivered via broadcast and cable, protection of computer software, database and information licensing, multimedia and Internet-related copyright issues, and related areas of advertising, character licensing, and rights of publicity and privacy.

We are experienced in copyright infringement litigation across various industries, including literary, artistic, musical and audiovisual works, as well as computer software and Internet-related media. Moreover, our copyright attorneys work together with our best-in-class Art Law practice group to solve our clients’ most difficult problems.

Trade Secrets

Working closely with the rest of our robust transactional practices, Hughes Hubbard represents plaintiffs and defendants in high stakes disputes as well as counseling matters to prevent the loss of proprietary information and threats to trade secrets. We work to protect, maintain, and enforce clients’ trade secret rights and to vigorously defend them against claims for trade secret misappropriation across a range of industries and technologies. Our team has handled bet-the-company trade secret misappropriation cases in a variety of courts and in arbitration, sometimes involving extremely complex technology. We also assist clients in identifying key trade secrets and putting systems in place to protect them. Whether your case involves employee theft of trade secrets, economic espionage, or defense against claims of trade secret misappropriation, our highly skilled team can help.

IP Transactions

Our attorneys work closely with our best-in- class corporate group to handle all types of IP transactions as part of mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, financing transactions, licensing, and asset purchases/sales. We have extensive experience in IP transactions ranging from biotechnology and pharmaceuticals to consumer electronics. And because our IP attorneys are also skilled, experienced litigators often called upon to resolve disputes over IP transactions, we bring that insight to bear when structuring an IP transaction.