SOFTWARE LICENSING, IP, & TRADE SECRET PROTECTION

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ATLANTA SOFTWARE LICENSING, IP, AND TRADE SECRET PROTECTION

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SOFTWARE LICENSING AND IP PROTECTION
What Matters Most
NDAs
Software Licensing
Privacy & Cybersecurity
Website and Tech Agreements
Trade Secret Protection
Customer Lists & Data
Company Property
What Matters Most

EXPERIENCE AND PROVEN RESULTS

THAT’S WHAT SETS THE FERNANDEZ LAW FIRM APART FROM THE REST.

Recently, we represented a software developer in a mandatory mediation preceding a litigation. Our Firm had prepared the contract for the Client years before, and it contained a mandatory mediation provision. The customer argued that our Client’s software did not work and wanted a refund of the license and installation fee. After listening at mediation, we spun that around and showed that we were about to counter with a very valid multi-million dollar claim. Some weeks thereafter, the customer fired its chief witness. No litigation ensued.

Mediation is extremely important. You can learn more at a day of intense mediation than you can in six months of discovery, and you also have a real chance of completely resolving the dispute — saving you tens of thousands of dollars in litigation costs and intellectual bandwidth.

Our value to the Client came when we drafted the contract years before, and also at the mediation — and that is our value to you. Because we have litigation, mediation, and corporate experience, we structure your contracts a little differently.

If you have a new, disruptive technology, you deserve to hire legal counsel who is experienced in drafting contracts that can withstand the heat of a courtroom. Everything turns on the specific contract language.

You also need to hire counsel who are highly skilled at litigation avoidance, because litigation is extremely expensive. We can provision your contracts to make it very difficult to bring litigation against your company.

You deserve to have at your side legal counsel who does not fold easily. Our chief counsel is an intellectual property and business lawyer who has had many years of experience, and some of the best courtroom and strategic defensive training for attorneys and lawyers in the United States, including the Trial Lawyers College with America’s top trial lawyer, Gerry Spence, and the “fight club” Trojan Horse Method.

NDAs

NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENTS

SOMETIMES THAT’S ALL YOU NEED

Don’t go in without protection. Call us. We can qµickly draft a non-disclosure agreement, an NDA, a hush agreement, or a confidentiality agreement, single or mutual. You do not need anyone stealing your innovation as you discuss financing, co-development, or a potential joint venture.

Software Licensing

SOFTWARE LICENSING

ONE OF THE BEST WAYS TO YIELD THE HIGHEST RETURN FROM YOUR INNOVATION

Licensing is one of the best ways to exploit your innovation, because the license provides you tremendous and precise control in the protection of your intellectual property to protect your rights in your intellectual property assets, and ensure your revenue and collection. A properly drafted software license is your best protection against any technology transfer that you do not want, including infringement.

So here’s the real secret: because we negotiate so many software licensing agreements, we know what others are doing across the country, what are the weak spots, and strong spots — and so we can tell you what the state of technology and licensing agreements are right now, and what the new terms and trends are, so that you can grow in those opportunities as well.

We regularly negotiate and structure complex contracts which involve software licensing and maintenance. If that is what you need, you have come to the right place. Right here.

You have worked hard to develop something unique — and you need to protect your technology, so that you can capitalize on it, right now, and in the future.

We regularly negotiate, draft, structure, and prepare the following agreements and contracts: software licensing agreements, master license agreements, IP agreements, maintenance agreements, SaaS agreements (Software as a Service), vendor agreements, development agreements, intellectual property agreements, reseller agreements, distribution agreements, help desk agreements, master license agreements, internet agreements, data center agreements, server hosting agreements, outsourcing agreements, joint venture agreements, strategic alliance agreements, internet agreements, Statements of Work, and Change Orders.

Privacy & Cybersecurity

PRIVACY AND CYBERSECURITY

PROTECT YOUR BUSINESS AGAINST LIABILITY ARISING FROM CYBER VULNERABILITIES

Your business needs to be secure, and there are many legal ways to begin to protect your business. The first way is through your contracts. All of your employment contracts, contractor agreements, vendor agreements, and business contracts need to contain strict intellectual property and confidentiality provisioning to protect your business.

Your business needs to remind everyone, and maintain a culture, in which intellectual property and cybersecurity are always maintained. The easiest way for your business to be compromised is by employees innocently falling for “phishing” scams. Your employment contracts should strongly emphasize the role that employees have for protecting your business’s intellectual property and cybersecurity.

Website and Tech Agreements

WEBSITE AND TECHNOLOGY AGREEMENTS

WEBSITE, IP, IT, ECOMMERCE, AND TECHNOLOGY AGREEMENTS

The Firm is well regarded in its negotiation, drafting, and preparation of website, IP, IT, ecommerce, and technology agreements and contracts. As a pro-bono matter, as a member of the Technology Advisory Group for the State Bar of Georgia President, our chief counsel negotiated the website development agreement for the State Bar of Georgia.

Trade Secret Protection

TRADE SECRET PROTECTION

WE OFFER REAL, ENFORCEABLE LEGAL PROTECTION

Our Firm has strong experience in drafting enforceable trade secret, non-disclosure agreement (NDA), hush agreements, and confidentiality agreements for your customer list and other intellectual property. We have successfully litigated Georgia Trade Secrets Act, non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), hush agreements, confidentiality, non-competition, non-solicitation of customers, nonsolicitation of employees, tortious interference with contract, breach of contract, theft of customer lists, exclusivity, and other intellectual property issues specific to technology, IT, software firms, and medical practices. The Firm has successfully engaged in many aspects of business, technology, IT, IP, and commercial litigation, both for plaintiffs and in defense of businesses and corporations. Because we know the law and regularly draft and review trade secret, nondisclosure agreements, NDAs, hush agreements, and confidentiality agreements, we have a good idea of what the legal trends are — but more importantly, because we have successfully litigated NDAs for many years, we know what matters most to a Judge in those agreements.

Customer Lists & Data

CUSTOMER LISTS AND DATA

ASSET PROTECTION THAT IS COMMONLY FORGOTTEN

Your business likely has valuable intellectual property in its innovations — but probably one of the most valuable pieces of intellectual property your business owns is its customer list — and you need to protect your customer list with NDAs (non-disclosure agreements, hush agreements, and or confidentiality agreements) and, internally, you need to create secure treatment of that customer list and all your intellectual property in order for a court to award you any legal protection whatsoever.

Company Property

COMPANY PROPERTY

PROTECT YOURSELF AND YOUR BUSINESS FROM RISKS YOU DID NOT EVEN KNOW EXISTED

Any employee can lose a company laptop or company cellphone. Anyone can leave a portal open and accessible to hackers. Any employee can click on a phishing scam. We can prepare a company handbook for you and a company equipment and cellphone policy that can help protect the business and ensure that the equipment is properly and securely maintained, and then returned at the end of the employment.

Did you know that cases have been fought over whether someone had the right to use the company’s own servers to steal the company’s intellectual property? That an employee has sued for worker’s compensation because she was talking to her boss on the company cellphone at the time of a car accident? That businesses have been sued (and found criminally liable) because employees viewed and stored child pornography on the business’s computers and servers?

Did you know that all of these cases turned on whether the company had the employee sign an agreement setting forth what was and was not an authorized use of the company’s electronics? We can help you with a Company Property and Company Equipment Agreement which will help prevent this type of situation from occurring.

We also include in our Company Property and Company Equipment Agreement a clearly stated policy of what is acceptable use by your employees of your business’s email, servers, telephones, and other electronics. The Company Property and Company Equipment Agreement clearly affirms your rights and protections in communications which flow across your electronics, including your rights to review all of those communications.

The Employment Agreements and 1099 Contractor Agreements prepared by The Fernandez Law Firm, P.C. can protect you in third party litigation, and also in litigation and unemployment claims brought by staff you have terminated.

Most companies have very basic documents that they have obtained from their payroll companies (or off the Internet) that are not enforceable and offer little or no protection whatsoever. It is important, as your business develops and uses more and more technology, to use agreements that keep up with the technology and actually protect your business.

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The 400 North Georgia Corridor is full of very smart people who have come from all over the country and all over the world with new ideas and new businesses, and we enjoy being part of that success. We represent start-ups who bring disruptive innovation and technologies to market. With an excellent reputation as technology counsel at the highest levels: for three years, our Firm was selected for the Georgia State Bar President’s Technology Advisory Committee. The Fernandez Law Firm is known and professionally highly regarded for comprehensive IP and IT representation at all stages and all levels of business and technology.