Copyright protects much of what a modern business produces: source code, documentation, product photography, video, marketing copy, music, designs, and training materials. Protection begins the moment a work is fixed, but the practical value of a copyright depends on decisions made long before a dispute, such as when to register, who owns contractor work, and what a license actually grants. Our copyright services handle registration, licensing, DMCA work, and enforcement as one connected service. Because we litigate copyright cases, we register works and draft licenses with the evidence and remedies a court will require already in mind, and our software background helps when the work at issue is code.
What Our Copyright Work Covers
The Copyright Act gives authors exclusive rights to reproduce, adapt, distribute, publicly perform, and display their works, and our service follows those rights through their commercial life. We prepare and file registrations, including group and supplementary filings and software deposits that protect trade secrets in source code. We sort out authorship and ownership, including work made for hire under Section 101 and written assignments from contractors. We draft and negotiate licenses for software, content, music, images, and data, and we advise on fair use under Section 107. On the enforcement side, we send DMCA notices and counter-notices, help platforms keep their safe harbor protection, and bring or defend infringement claims, from demand letters through federal court.
The Copyright Services We Offer
Copyright registration handles filings with the U.S. Copyright Office, with a strategy that prioritizes the works most likely to be copied and times filings to preserve statutory damages and attorneys' fees. Copyright licensing drafts and negotiates exclusive and non-exclusive licenses, with the granted rights, territory, term, royalties, audit rights, and termination terms defined precisely. Copyright enforcement scales the response to the problem, from takedown programs and cease and desist demands to federal infringement litigation. DMCA counsel works both sides of the statute: sending takedown notices and counter-notices for rights holders, building notice-and-takedown and repeat infringer policies for platforms under Section 512, and advising on the anti-circumvention rules of Section 1201. Each service has its own page with more detail.
When Copying Turns Into Litigation
Before a U.S. work can be the subject of an infringement suit, Section 411(a) generally requires that the Copyright Office has registered it or refused registration, and the Supreme Court confirmed in Fourth Estate v. Wall-Street.com that a pending application is not enough. Section 412 adds a second rule: statutory damages and attorneys' fees are available only if registration came before the infringement began or within three months of first publication. Statutory damages run from $750 to $30,000 per work, and up to $150,000 for willful infringement. We bring and defend claims involving copied code, content scraped from websites, unlicensed images and music, and disputes over who owns a work. The courtroom work runs through our trademark, copyright, and media litigation service.
Ownership, Licenses, And Deal Terms
Many copyright problems are contract problems in disguise. A company pays a contractor to build its app, logo, or website and assumes it owns the result, but without a signed written assignment the contractor usually keeps the copyright, and software written by an outside developer rarely qualifies as a work made for hire. We fix ownership with assignments and confirmatory agreements, and we build the right terms into development, agency, and employment agreements. For licenses, we define exactly which rights are granted and which are retained, address open-source components and AI training uses, and plan for the termination right under Section 203, which lets individual authors end many grants after 35 years. In acquisitions and financings, we confirm chain of title for the code and content being bought.
How A Copyright Engagement Runs
For registration, we start with an inventory of your works and their publication dates, then recommend what to register first and how to group filings. You receive copies of the filed applications and, once issued, the certificates; the Copyright Office currently processes most electronic filings in a few months. Enforcement starts with evidence: we capture the infringing material, compare it to your work, check registration status, and recommend a response, whether a takedown, a demand letter, or a lawsuit. Licensing work starts with your goals or the other side's draft and returns a redline and an issues memo. On a DMCA compliance project for a platform, the deliverables are a designated agent filing, written policies, and workflows your team can run day to day.
Code, Content, And Technical Proof
Copyright disputes involving software turn on technical comparison. Courts in many circuits apply the abstraction-filtration-comparison test, which filters out unprotectable ideas, functional elements, and code dictated by efficiency or external constraints before comparing what remains. That analysis requires reading the code, and our engineering background lets us do it alongside your developers rather than through intermediaries. The same skill applies to scraped data, generative AI outputs, and disputes over APIs and interfaces. Copyright questions also surface inside broader business disputes, such as a terminated developer who withholds source code or a former licensee who keeps distributing. Our clients include software and SaaS companies, publishers and media businesses, game studios, photographers and creative agencies, education companies, and consumer brands whose catalogs and sites are copied.
Pricing And When To Reach Out
Registrations and standard filings are well suited to flat-fee products with a fixed price, a stated scope, and a set turnaround. DMCA notice programs, licensing negotiations, and enforcement matters are scoped and estimated in writing before we begin, and litigation is estimated by phase. Reach out before you publish or release a work you expect to be copied, since registering early preserves statutory damages and fees. Reach out when a contractor or former employee claims to own code or content you paid for, when you receive a takedown notice or an infringement demand, and when you find your work on a competitor's site or in a marketplace listing. The three-year limitations period under Section 507(b) also makes delay costly.
