Intellectual Property

For most companies, brand recognition, proprietary content, software, and confidential methods are intangible assets worth more than hard assets on the company's balance sheet. Those intangible assets exist as legal rights, and those rights are only as strong as the steps taken to secure and enforce them. Hank Fasthoff has spent more than 29 years protecting and enforcing intellectual property for companies, creators, and entertainment and online businesses, from the decision of how to protect an asset through the claim that enforces it.

Fasthoff Law Firm handles trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, trade dress, domain names, and rights of publicity, and coordinates with patent counsel when an invention requires that separate protection. Trademarks protect names, logos, slogans, and other identifiers that tell customers where a product or service comes from. Copyrights attach the moment an original work is fixed in a tangible medium, whether software, music, visual art, or written content, and copyright registration creates presumptions of ownership and entitles copyright owners to statutory damages (depending on various factors) that can make enforcement economically practical. Trade secrets protect information that derives its value from confidentiality, from formulas and manufacturing processes, to customer lists and pricing models, and which may lose that protection the moment reasonable safeguards lapse. Trade dress covers a product's distinctive visual appearance or packaging, and rights of publicity prevent unauthorized commercial use of a person's name, image, likeness, or other personal attributes.

Owning intellectual property rights and being in a position to extract value from them are two different things. Hank applies for and registers trademarks with the USPTO and copyrights with the U.S. Copyright Office, drafts work-for-hire and assignment agreements that establish ownership of works created by employees and contractors, and negotiates licenses that let you monetize assets without surrendering control of them. When a transaction depends on intellectual property rights, he confirms what the seller owns and whether any encumbrances may limit the rights being transferred. When someone copies, dilutes, or misappropriates a protected asset, he enforces your rights through cease and desist letters, DMCA takedowns, UDRP domain name proceedings, TTAB cancellation and opposition actions, and litigation.

Hank has represented recording artists, music publishers, entertainment companies, consumer brands, and individual creators in intellectual property disputes ranging from copyright infringement and trademark cancellation to trade dress and right of publicity claims, so you get IP counsel grounded in how these rights perform when they're contested. On every engagement Hank works toward the same result, intellectual property you can own with confidence, monetize while minimizing risk, and defend when your rights are challenged.