Autonomous Vehicles
We provide comprehensive legal counsel to autonomous vehicle developers, addressing the unique IP, regulatory, liability, and commercial challenges of self-driving technology across ground, air, and maritime applications.
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Navigating the Legal Road to Autonomy
Autonomous vehicle technology promises to revolutionize transportation, creating unprecedented legal challenges across intellectual property, regulation, liability, and commercial relationships. MC Law provides comprehensive counsel to companies developing and deploying self-driving technology.
Intellectual Property
AV technology involves complex IP landscapes with overlapping patents. We develop patent strategies for AV systems, conduct freedom-to-operate analyses, negotiate patent licenses and cross-licenses, protect AV-related trade secrets, and advise on standard-essential patents for V2X communications.
Regulatory Framework
AV regulation varies significantly across jurisdictions. We help clients navigate federal AV guidance and rulemaking, state autonomous vehicle laws, testing and deployment permits, safety certification processes, and international regulatory frameworks.
Liability and Insurance
Autonomous vehicles shift traditional liability paradigms. We advise on product liability for AV systems, allocation of liability between stakeholders, insurance requirements and structures, incident response protocols, and litigation defense strategies.
Key IP Challenges
Patent Eligibility
Navigating Section 101 requirements for AI and algorithm-based inventions in the post-Alice landscape.
Trade Secret Balance
Determining when to patent versus maintain as trade secrets, especially for training data and model weights.
Inventorship Questions
Addressing inventorship for AI-assisted inventions and outputs generated by machine learning systems.
Defensive Positioning
Building patent portfolios that provide freedom to operate and defense against competitors.
Open Source Issues
Managing IP implications of using open-source frameworks and contributing to open-source projects.
Global Strategy
Coordinating international patent filings across jurisdictions with varying approaches to AI patentability.
Our Services
Patent Prosecution
Strategic patent drafting and prosecution for AI innovations
Brand Protection
Trademark registration for AI products and services
Trade Secrets
Protection strategies for algorithms and training data
Copyright
Software code and AI-generated content protection
IP Licensing
Technology licensing and joint development agreements
Litigation
IP dispute resolution and enforcement
Industry Team
Representative Matters
Machine Learning Platform Portfolio
Built a comprehensive patent portfolio of 40+ patents protecting a Fortune 500 company's machine learning infrastructure.
AI Training Data Protection
Developed comprehensive trade secret protection program for proprietary datasets and model training methodologies.
Patent Infringement Defense
Successfully defended AI startup against patent infringement claims from industry competitor.
Cross-License Agreement
Negotiated strategic cross-licensing agreement between AI companies enabling market expansion.
Discuss Your IP Strategy
Our industry-specialized attorneys are ready to help you develop a comprehensive intellectual property strategy tailored to your business.