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Technology · Software and IT

Technology companies, from first-funding startups to established software and hardware businesses, get legal counsel from former engineers who handle your IP, commercial contracts, and data privacy with a real grasp of how the product actually works.

You ship software, hardware, or internet services, and your legal needs change as fast as your roadmap. Our attorneys built products before they practiced law, so when you describe your architecture, integrations, or model pipeline, you are not starting from scratch. We work with developers, device makers, platforms, and their investors on the patents, contracts, and privacy questions that decide whether a technology business scales cleanly or stalls.

Software and Hardware IP

Your IP is the company. We craft patent strategies for software systems and hardware designs, protect source code and algorithms as trade secrets, and keep your open source use clean so a license obligation never derails a release or a deal. When someone copies your work or accuses you of copying theirs, we handle the dispute. As you grow, we manage filings across the regions where your customers and competitors operate.

Licensing and Tech Deals

Revenue rides on your agreements. We draft software licenses and SaaS terms that match how your product is actually sold and used, negotiate cloud and infrastructure contracts, and structure development, reseller, and partnership deals. When you are buying, selling, or investing, we run the technology diligence and paper the transaction. Because we understand the engineering, the commitments in your contracts line up with what your systems can deliver.

Privacy and Data Governance

Handling user data brings obligations under GDPR, CCPA, and a growing list of laws. We help you build privacy into the product from the design stage, set up data governance that engineers can actually follow, prepare for breach response before you need it, and structure international data transfers. The goal is compliance that fits your stack and ship cadence rather than a policy binder nobody reads.

Frequently asked questions

Make sure the company actually owns its core IP, because investors will check this in diligence. That means signed invention-assignment agreements from every founder, employee, and contractor, clear records that no prior employer has a claim, and confirmation that any open-source code you used is properly licensed. Filing at least a provisional patent on key inventions and registering your main trademarks also strengthens your position before a round.

Usually a combination, because each covers something different. Copyright protects your actual code as written but not the underlying ideas, patents can protect novel functional methods if they show a concrete technical improvement, and trade secrets protect algorithms and architecture you keep confidential. A typical stack copyrights the codebase, patents a few high-value inventions, and locks the rest down as trade secrets with access controls and confidentiality agreements.

Pin down the scope of the license, who owns customer data and any derived analytics, limitation of liability and warranty disclaimers, service levels, and how either side can terminate and get data back. For AI-enabled products, also address whether you can use customer inputs to train models, which has become a frequent sticking point. Clear, balanced terms reduce disputes and make enterprise sales and later diligence smoother.

It depends on where your users are and what data you handle, not just where you're based. State laws like California's apply to many companies handling resident data, the GDPR reaches EU users, and sector rules add requirements for health or financial data. The practical baseline is to map what you collect, post an accurate privacy policy, honor user rights and opt-outs, and use data processing agreements with vendors that touch personal data.

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