Intellectual Property
Own it. License it. Enforce it.
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.
Services Include
- Trademark evaluation and availability analysis
- Trademark applications and prosecution
- Copyright matters before the U.S. Copyright Office
- IP licenses and assignments
- Software and content ownership issues
- Domain name disputes
- Trade secret and confidentiality issues
- IP litigation strategy
Intellectual Property Insights
Intellectual Property
Trade Secret Protection for Texas Businesses: What Qualifies, What You Must Do to Keep It, and What Happens When Someone Takes It
A trade secret is the one form of intellectual property that a single disclosure can destroy in an instant, with nothing you or any court can do to get it back. A patent expires 20 years from filing and, as long as maintenance fees are paid, stays enforceable no matter how widely the holder discloses the invention. A trademark can last indefinitely as long as it's used in commerce and renewed.
Read articleTrademark Basics for Business Owners: How Federal Registration Works and Why It's Worth More Than Common Law Rights
A trademark is any word, name, symbol, design, or combination that identifies the source of goods or services and distinguishes them from those offered by others. Your company name, your logo, your product names, your taglines, and even distinctive product packaging can function as trademarks.
Read articleRight of Publicity in Texas: When Someone Uses Your Name, Image, or Likeness Without Permission
A right of publicity claim arises when someone uses another person's name, image, likeness, voice, or other identifying characteristic for commercial benefit without that person's consent. It protects the economic value of a person's identity, the principle being that individuals have the right to control how their personal attributes are exploited commercially and to benefit from that exploitation.
Read articleTrademarks
What a Trademark Is and the Rights Federal Registration Provides
A trademark is any word, phrase, symbol, design, or combination of these that identifies the source of goods or services and distinguishes them from those offered by others. The name on the label, the logo on the packaging, the slogan in the advertising, and even the distinctive shape of a product or its packaging can all function as trademarks if consumers associate them with a particular source.
Read articleWhy Some Trademarks Are Stronger Than Others
Every trademark falls somewhere on a spectrum of distinctiveness that runs from fanciful (the strongest) to generic (the weakest, and unprotectable). A business that picks a strong mark from the start spends less on lawyers and more on growth. Understanding the spectrum is the single most important step a business owner can take before choosing a brand name.
Read articleWhy a Trademark Clearance Search Comes Before Everything Else
A trademark clearance search answers one question before a business commits money to a brand name. Can you use this mark and register it without running into someone who got there first? The search comes before the domain registration, before the logo design, before the business cards, before the website, and before the USPTO filing.
Read articleHow Federal Trademark Registration Works at the USPTO
The United States Patent and Trademark Office processes roughly 750,000 trademark applications per year. Each application follows a defined sequence from filing through examination, publication, opposition period, and (if everything goes well) registration.
Read articleCommon Trademark Mistakes That Cost Businesses Time and Money
Most trademark problems are preventable. The businesses that end up in expensive disputes, abandon applications, or lose the right to use their own brand names almost always made an avoidable mistake early in the process, usually before they consulted a trademark attorney.
Read articleTTAB Proceedings and How They Differ from Federal Court
The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board handles disputes over the right to register a mark. TTAB proceedings look like litigation in many ways, but the Board can only decide registrability. It can't award damages, issue injunctions, or order anyone to stop using a mark.
Read articleEnforcing Your Trademark Rights
A federal trademark registration provides the owner a set of enforcement tools that common law rights alone don't offer. Nationwide constructive notice, a presumption of validity, access to federal court, the ability to record with U.S. Customs, and the potential for statutory damages in counterfeiting cases all flow from registration.
Read articleTrademark Protection for Architectural Works & Other Designs
Architects, owners and developers can benefit from understanding the role that intellectual property law plays in protecting architectural plans and building designs. Copyright law lends itself more to the types of protections that architects would tend to seek, while trademark law is generally more applicable to building or business owners.
Read articleTrademark Licensing and Quality Control
A trademark license is a contractual grant of permission to use a mark in connection with specified goods or services, without transferring ownership. Licensing allows a brand owner to expand into new markets, new product categories, and new territories by authorizing a third party to manufacture, sell, or distribute products bearing the licensor's mark, in exchange for royalties or other compensation.
Read articleCopyrights
Copyright Duration and the Public Domain
Copyright expires. Every copyrighted work eventually enters the public domain, where anyone can use it without permission, without a license, and without paying royalties. But "eventually" can mean very different things depending on when the work was created, whether it was published, who created it, and whether the copyright owner followed the formalities that older law required.
Read articleCopyright Assignments and Transfers
Copyright is a bundle of exclusive rights. Reproduction, distribution, public performance, public display, and the right to create derivative works are all separate sticks in the bundle, and each can be transferred, licensed, or retained independently.
Read articleCopyright Registration and Why Timing Determines What You Can Recover
Copyright exists the moment an original work is fixed in a tangible medium. Registration with the U.S. Copyright Office is voluntary. But the remedies available in an infringement suit depend almost entirely on whether the owner registered, and when.
Read articleCopyright Ownership and the Work-for-Hire Doctrine
Copyright belongs to the person who creates the work. 17 U.S.C. § 201(a). That default rule governs every photograph, every line of code, every design, and every written document produced by anyone, anywhere, unless an exception applies. For businesses, the most important exception is the work-for-hire doctrine, which vests copyright in the employer or commissioning party rather than in the individual who created the work.
Read articleProving Copyright Infringement
A copyright infringement claim requires proof of two things. First, the plaintiff must own a valid copyright in the work. Second, the defendant must have copied protectable elements of that work. Both elements must be established before a court reaches the question of remedies, and both involve layers of analysis that determine whether a claim survives a motion to dismiss, survives summary judgment, and ultimately prevails at trial.
Read articleFair Use, the Four-Factor Test, and When It Doesn't Protect You
Fair use is the most commonly invoked and most commonly misunderstood defense in copyright law. Under 17 U.S.C. § 107, the fair use of a copyrighted work for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research is not infringement.
Read articleDMCA Takedown Notices
A DMCA takedown notice is the most commonly used copyright enforcement tool on the Internet. Under Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a copyright owner who finds infringing material on a website or platform can send a written notice to the service provider's designated agent, and the provider must expeditiously remove or disable access to the material.
Read articleCopyright Licensing
A copyright owner who never licenses the work owns an asset that produces no revenue. A copyright owner who licenses without proper documentation may discover that the licensee claims broader rights than the owner intended to grant, or that the license is unenforceable, or that the owner inadvertently transferred ownership instead of granting permission.
Read articleCopyright Termination Rights Under Section 203
An author who assigns a copyright or grants an exclusive license often does so early in the work's life, before the work's value is known. A songwriter signs a publishing deal for a modest advance. A novelist assigns all rights to a publisher for a royalty that seems reasonable at the time.
Read articleMusic Copyright, Sampling, and Licensing
Every recorded song involves two separate copyrights. One protects the musical composition, the notes, melody, harmony, rhythm, and lyrics. Another protects the sound recording, the specific recorded performance of that composition. Different people typically own each copyright, and different rules govern how each can be used, licensed, and enforced.
Read articleArtificial Intelligence and Copyright
Artificial intelligence is producing text, images, music, code, and video at an unprecedented scale, and copyright law has not caught up. Two foundational questions are in active litigation across the federal courts. First, can a work generated by AI be copyrighted, and if so, who is the author?
Read articleCopyright Protection for Architectural Works & Other Designs
Architects, owners and developers can benefit from understanding the role that intellectual property law plays in protecting architectural plans and building designs. Copyright law lends itself more to the types of protections that architects would tend to seek, while trademark law is generally more applicable to building or business owners.
Read articleRelated Work
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