Patent protection may be available for a new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement. Patent protection is not available for abstract ideas, laws of nature (e.g., laws of gravity), and natural phenomena.

Keep in mind that patent protection may be available for your business methods, software, and improvements to existing technologies.

Trenner Law Firm can evaluate your innovations in view of existing technologies to determine what aspects may be patentable. Trenner Law Firm can also help you with all aspects of the patent application process, including preparing and filing patent applications in the United States Patent Office, responding to examiner rejections, and appealing the examiner’s decisions when necessary.

Trenner Law Firm can also help secure patent rights in other countries.

Trademark protection may be available for the name, tagline, and/or logo used to identify your goods or services in commerce. You should avoid these common pitfalls:

• Selecting a weak mark.
• Selecting a mark that is generic or descriptive of your goods or services.
• Selecting a mark that is confusingly similar to someone else’s mark.
• Failing to fully and accurately identify all of your goods and services in the trademark application.

Trenner Law Firm can guide you through the selection process to help your business identify a strong tradename and trademark for your products or services. Once you have selected a mark, Trenner Law Firm works with a professional search firm to help your business avoid infringing on someone else's trademark rights.

Trenner Law Firm can help you with all aspects of state and federal trademark registration, and advise you on the proper use of your trademarks so that you continue to build the strength of your trademark and do not lose important rights in it.

Copyright protection may be available for original works of authorship that are fixed in a tangible medium of expression. Protection is not available for facts, ideas, systems, and methods, although protection may be available for the expression of those facts or ideas.

Trenner Law Firm can help you identify copyrightable materials, provide employment or contractor agreements, and register your works with the Library of Congress.

Trade secret protection may be available for developments that are capable of being maintained secret. Protection is typically not available for developments that can be reverse engineered or come to be publicly known by other means.

Trenner Law Firm can help you identify trade secret materials, and help implement a trade secret program to help ensure your trade secrets are maintained as trade secrets.

If you decide to sell, license, or otherwise transfer some or all of the rights in your intellectual property, you should have a qualified intellectual property attorney assist in the negotiations and preparation of the appropriate documents. It is important that you fully understand which rights are being transferred, which rights are being retained, and the obligations both you and the other party have to one another.

Trenner Law Firm can help negotiate, prepare, and review licensing, technology transfer, and other agreements.

Establishing a business may seem straightforward, but as with anything, there are pitfalls if you don’t know what you are doing. For example, if you choose a tradename that is confusingly similar to that of another business, you may be threatened with legal action to change your tradename. This can result in considerable expense after you have gone through the trouble of ordering business cards, registering a domain name, and even advertising. Trenner Law Firm can help you with business formation issues, nondisclosure, licensing, assignment and other agreements, employee and contractor agreements that preserve intellectual property, strategic partnerships, intellectual property portfolio management and procedures. Also see below for more information on trademarks, servicemarks, brand protection, copyrights and trade secrets.

Most businesses don't want to spend precious time and money resources  on litigation. Under some circumstances, however, litigation is inevitable.

Trenner Law Firm works with experienced litigators to enforce the rights in your intellectual property against infringement/ misappropriation, and to defend against wrongful accusations of infringement/ misappropriation.

Trenner Law Firm works with experienced litigation and business law attorneys to handle other issues which may arise. Trenner Law Firm also works with experience attorneys and agents in foreign countries, including Canada, Germany, Great Britain, the Europe Union, China, and Australia, to help secure and protect intellectual property rights in these and other countries.