Litigation
For companies competing either locally or globally, the enforcement of and protection against intellectual property has become increasingly critical for success, if not survival. Attorneys from Waller Lansden’s Intellectual Property Litigation Practice Group have guided clients from a broad range of industries through the traps and pitfalls inherent in intellectual property to help achieve their business goals.
Our intellectual property litigation experience includes hospitality and service franchising, product distribution, entertainment, media and software development and use. We frequently obtain for our clients temporary and permanent injunctions to protect trade secrets and domain names and to enforce non-competition and non-solicitation agreements. In addition, we regularly litigate issues involving patent law, copyright law, the First Amendment freedom of speech and of the press, unauthorized computer access and “hacking,” the Internet, privacy rights, and rights of publicity.
Franchising, Distribution, and Trademark Enforcement
Waller Lansden is a leader in counseling and litigating on behalf of franchisors. Combining our extensive experience in obtaining and enforcing trademark and trade secret rights, our knowledge of state franchise laws, and broad knowledge of franchising industry practices, we appreciate how federal and state laws intersect with the franchisor-franchisee business relationship.
Using this “total franchise package” approach, we routinely collect unpaid royalties, obtain temporary and permanent injunctions preventing the use of trademarks and trade secrets and facilitate the transitioning of underperforming franchisees out of the franchise system. We also advise our franchisor clients in the formation and maintenance of franchisee relations, anticipating issues in a manner that avoids or greatly reduces the need for litigation.
Key franchising industries in which we have experience include:
- Fast-food restaurants
- Family-oriented restaurants
- Motor hotels
- Cleaning and restoration services
- Real estate brokerages
In addition to our work with franchising, we have extensive experience enforcing trademarks, in state and federal court, as well as before the Trademark Trial and Appeals Board. Our recent work in this area includes forcing one of our client’s competitors to abandon a trademark application that threatened one of our client’s leading lines of products and protecting a bank’s former name from unauthorized use in the marketplace.
We also are experienced in enforcing and defending against distribution agreements, involving the sale of goods. We recently turned an attempt by one our client’s major suppliers to cut our client off from a crucial stream of goods into a settlement that actually expanded the distribution relationship and resulted in a sizeable payment to our client as well.
Entertainment
Waller Lansden represents clients music, film and television clients in intellectual property litigation in federal and state courts throughout the country. Representative matters include copyright and trademark infringement related to sound recordings, musical compositions and album artwork, accounting for royalties, breach of entertainment agreements and appeals for college and professional athletes.
Media
Waller Lansden assists media clients, including a network television affiliate, newspapers, cable television service providers and cable television networks, and Internet service providers in a wide range of dispute resolution and litigation matters, including constitutional issues related to the First Amendment and media issues. Our attorneys have experience with commercial speech law on behalf of broadcast and print media, as well as the advertising industry, in First Amendment litigation. We have successfully defended clients in numerous defamation and privacy suits, including claims for slander, libel, false light, and related claims. We have handled actions dealing with prior restraints, including successfully defending against a lawsuit and temporary restraining order motion seeking to enjoin the broadcast of a documentary by a national broadcasting entity. Our experience also includes the successful prosecution of the first case in Tennessee leading to the identification of an anonymous Internet poster.
We provide “around-the-clock” pre-broadcast and pre-publication review of print and broadcast materials raising potential defamation or privacy issues or concerning newsgathering techniques. We also provide counsel on access to court issues, open meetings and public record issues. We served as counsel in the first case applying the Tennessee Supreme Court’s Rule 30 concerning cameras in courtrooms. Additionally, we have successfully handled cases seeking media access to records and places.
Software and Technology
As with our franchise experience, we understand how federal copyright and patent law, state contract law and software development technology interact. We regularly enforce software licensing agreements, successfully leveraging injunctive relief available under the Copyright Act to obtain compliance. Waller Lansden recently succeeded in obtaining a favorable result for a software developer that had been accused by a former business partner of copyright infringement and failure to use best efforts to develop and market the partner’s software product.
We also advise consumers of software products regarding their rights and responsibilities under copyright law and their license agreements. We defend such firms against the increasingly prevalent practice of demanding “software audits” of company computers as a means of obtaining additional license fees and “penalties,” such as those commonly demanded by the Software and Information Industry Association. In connection with such representation, we conduct the “software audit” in a manner that protects our clients’ rights while obtaining the favorable result for the client.
Internet
We routinely defend against “cybersquatting,” the practice of obtaining Internet domain names that are confusingly similar to our client’s domain names or trademarks. We have obtained the transfer of a number of domain names on behalf of our clients, both in the pre-litigation stages and through arbitration.
We also have experience in investigating the illegal access of our clients’ computer networks, using the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and state law to ascertain the identities of the perpetrators and to seek redress.
Additionally we have successfully blocked attempts to obtain jurisdiction in inconvenient forums over our clients based on Internet use and websites. Conversely, we have also successfully obtained Tennessee jurisdiction over parties based on such “Internet jurisdiction.”
|
