Overview
Locke Lord attorneys regularly draft and negotiate international research and development agreements, licensing agreements (from both the licensors’ and licensees’ perspective), co-development and other agreements involving the creation or acquisition of rights to intellectual property. In addition, we offer our clients assistance in the commercialization and leveraging of the intellectual property rights they develop and acquire through licensing inquiries, as well as the negotiation of licenses, joint ventures, manufacturing and supply agreements and similar arrangements. We also assist our clients with IP-related due diligence to help ensure that, on the buy side, they are getting what they pay for and, on the sell side, that potential problems are identified and appropriately accounted for.
Our attorneys provide insight into the critical outsourcing and licensing issues that frequently arise in international transactions, such as structuring fair limits of liability, handling the regulatory aspects of transactions, and ensuring that any early termination can be accomplished at a reasonable cost with minimal business disruption. Relying on our experience in traditional legal disciplines, such as finance, tax, intellectual property and regulatory counseling, our attorneys have provided some of the world’s leading companies with focused and practical advice for handling the particular issues presented by sales, purchases, outsourcings and other intellectual property-related transactions.
Our multi-disciplinary team also includes attorneys focused primarily on domestic and non-U.S. dispute resolution and litigation, which includes avoiding and managing potential disputes before they occur. We also employ proven alternative dispute resolution methods to help clients resolve the often complex, technical issues that may serve as roadblocks in putting together a successful IT project. Our attorneys have a proven ability to help clients obtain favorable verdicts in cases that pertain to IP infringement, invalidity and product clearance, securitization of IP assets, Internet domain name use and enforcement matters, advertising clearance opinions, product distribution agreements, IP audits, compliance monitoring, bankruptcy-related IP auctions and sales.