For many clients a strategic licensing program (both out to maximize revenue and value and in to acquire new technologies) is an important, often core, element of its business plan. For some situations this means obtaining licenses for mission critical technologies, products, and services. For others, it means a program of granting licenses to achieve competitive and/or income producing objectives. Typical competitive objectives including expansion into new markets, mergers and acquisitions, and strategic partnerships. Income-producing objectives include traditional royalty generating licenses and more creative uses of licenses to provide an economic advantage to the company’s product lines. Our attorneys have prepared well more than 1000 licensing agreements.
The design of a successful licensing program requires an intimate understanding of the client’s competitive and economic challenges and goals as well as the business temperament of the client’s management team. Armed with this knowledge, our extensive experience dealing with licensing programs of every ilk and our willingness to think creatively, we have assisted hundreds of client’s in the development and execution of successful licensing strategies.
Dickstein Shapiro’s IP licensing group comprises a core of full time licensing attorneys, most with technical degrees, who collectively negotiate hundreds of licenses each year. This is done as a team approach where we work with members of our tax, finance, corporate, communications, export/import, government contracts, and bankruptcy practices to ensure the best overall program for the client.
Our licensing lawyers are recognized leaders in the licensing arena and in the intellectual property field as a whole. Collectively they have authored leading texts such as: Introduction to Intellectual Property Law, Intellectual Property Technology Transfer, and Introduction to Intellectual Property Legal Opinions. Members of the licensing group have been actively involved in chairing various professional society committees, including the Licensing Executive Society, the American Bar Association, and the American Intellectual Property Law Association. One member serves on the Executive Committee of the International Trademark Association.
Examples of the many types of transactions frequently encountered by the Dickstein Shapiro licensing team include:
Commercial licenses
Corporate transactional IP agreements
IP-oriented U.S. government agreements
Implemented programs