Building, Maintaining, and Enforcing Patent and Trademark Portfolios
Dicke, Billig & Czaja’s primary focus is patent and trademark application preparation, prosecution and maintenance supported by effective IP portfolio management. We also have extensive experience with copyright and trade secret protection, and provide counseling, licensing, and litigation services. All of our attorneys are registered to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
DBC recognizes the unique needs of each client. We conduct inventor meetings and reviews as requested, accommodate client-generated filing forms, and follow client-required administrative procedures faithfully.
Since our firm’s formation in early 1998, DBC has been dedicated to delivering an outstanding work product at an exceptional value. The firm is staffed to efficiently prepare and file numerous applications on an ongoing basis. Most of our paralegals have been with the firm for 10+ years; some since its’ existence. The firm is staffed to efficiently prepare and assist in prosecution, and are prepared to file numerous applications on an ongoing basis.
In addition to our highly competent staff, the effectiveness of our firm is attributable to the technical proficiency of DBC attorneys.
Areas of expertise
Every attorney in our firm has a technical background and is registered to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. We are prepared to assist you with protecting your innovations.
Patents
While we hate to play favorites, patents are at the top of the order in this list for good reason: the majority of the client services performed at DBC revolve around the patent-related ones listed below. Wherever you may be in the process – up to and including litigation – our team of expert patent attorneys stands ready to assist in nurturing and protecting your innovations. We love doing what we do best.
Utility Applications
Design Applications
Prosecution
Post Grant Proceedings
Patentability Opinions
Clearance
Infringement Opinions
Validity Opinions
Licensing
National Stage Filings
Portfolio Management
Our team also excels at transforming client business goals into profitable achievements, while helping those same clients to avoid unnecessary risk and expense as they consider their IP strategy. The following services have earned our clients’ trust and loyalty again and again.
Portfolio Review/Analysis
Risk Assessment
Right to Use
Due Diligence
Landscape Review
Trademarks
Our versatile attorneys have also secured trademark protection for many clients. We particularly adept at trademark preparation and prosecution. We have litigated trademark disputes in federal court, as well as trademark opposition and cancellation proceedings before the Patent and Trademark Office. Our experience protecting global brands benefits the entire firm, allowing us to provide sound advice on trademark issues to colleagues as well as clients.
Applications
Prosecution
Oppositions
Clearance
Infringement Opinions
Licensing
Rights Enforcement
When intellectual property rights are in conflict, we seek the most efficient and effective strategy to resolve the conflict. Litigation is not always necessary to achieve a client’s objectives, but should litigation become necessary, we are experienced in navigating clients through the pretrial, trial, and appellate process.
Litigation Counseling
Litigation
Federal Circuit Appeals
Copyrights
An essential aspect of our firm’s business, we have secured copyright for a number of creative individuals and entertainment companies. We have represented a New York Times Bestselling Author on copyright matters including copyright licensing and in copyright infringement counseling and have reviewed recording contracts for musicians.
Registrations
Infringement Opinions
Licensing
Technology Services
Our attorneys have backgrounds in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Civil Engineering, and Physics.
Computer Hardware/Software
Electrical
Mechanical
Semiconductors and Processes
Medical Devices
Chemical & Materials Science
Optics
Learn more about our Technology Service Areas
Computer Hardware and Software
Dicke, Billig & Czaja’s clients have included the world’s largest computer hardware and software companies since the earliest days of the firm. The practical experience we offer has contributed greatly to sustaining these and other client relationships for many years.
During their previous careers in engineering, a number of DBC attorneys personally designed computer hardware and/or wrote software. Since then, they have drafted hundreds of related patent applications. We have an intimate understanding of the challenges and opportunities involved in transforming innovative concepts into commercially viable hardware or software products. Whatever their size, our clients have found this combined experience invaluable – and profitable.
Protecting your business has never been more difficult than in today’s evolving marketplace. By securing your IP amidst an equally shifting legal landscape, our knowledgeable team will work with you to enhance your innovation’s commercial and competitive potential. Founding partner Pat Billig even “wrote the book” on the subject: he was the original coordinating editor of Electronic and Software Patents: Law and Practice (BNA Books).
A majority of DBC attorneys possess electrical engineering degrees and related backgrounds. This expertise weaves its way through several of the more specific electronically-oriented Technology Areas listed here, such as Computer Hardware and Semiconductors.
As with Computer Hardware and Software and several of our other technical specialties, our electrical IP legal specialization is bolstered by several of our attorneys’ previous electrical engineering experience.
From testing avionics or manufacturing processes to designing high-voltage power systems for industrial plants or control systems for power transformers and regulators, our electrical group possess decades of problem-solving skills. But these are not only fellow engineers, but also patent attorneys with decades of experience in navigating a complex process who can speak your language as they guide you.
By patent experience alone, a vast majority of DBC attorneys can confidently count the mechanical discipline as one of their technical specialties. Perhaps more than any other technology area, the mechanical specialty speaks to the versatility of our attorneys and the work product they create.
Several DBC attorneys have degrees in either mechanical engineering or industrial or civil engineering, the latter of which requires much of the same curriculum one would find in a mechanical engineering program.
Mechanically-oriented matters benefit from the variety of backgrounds our firm represents, and matters which are relatively less mechanical in nature benefit from the tremendous flexibility of our mechanically-trained professionals. From medical devices (an area so robust as to demand its own category below) to manufacturing processes to imaging and printing technology, members of our team have labored over numerous patents for mechanical and electromechanical systems.
For decades our attorneys have advised innovators in the highly profitable and highly volatile semiconductor technology sector. Certain clients are multi-billion dollar companies which have been ranked in the USPTO’s top ten patenting organizations for more than five years apiece. From Western Europe to the western United States, our semiconductor experience has global reach and commercially protective impact.
Memory devices have been and continue to be a strong focus of our patent prosecution practice. Various processes for semiconductor circuit design and fabrication and semiconductor packaging are also areas of extensive experience.
We have seen many trends in semiconductor and process technologies come and go. You may rely upon our Freedom to Operate services to ensure your innovation is on the right end of the trend line. We’ll work with you to assess whether it is protectable and worth the long-term investment in a competitive, fast-paced industry.
DBC’s home state of Minnesota, nicknamed “The Land of 10,000 Lakes,” could also be said to be the land of the life sciences, and our firm is honored to play a part in such an innovative scene. We have carefully cultivated a reputation for excellent IP legal services working for multiple divisions and subsidiaries of one of the world’s foremost medical device manufacturers. Working with medical device companies large and small to secure intellectual property that may — pending FDA approval — one day improve health outcomes for millions is both a thrill and a privilege.
Two of our attorneys are biomedical engineers by training, and many DBC attorneys are well-versed in the nuances of medical device patent language; we know our proximal end from our distal end! We have extensive experience in a multitude of medical device technologies and their applications to the human anatomy, including heart valve repair and replacement, ENT instrumentation, tissue ablation, pacemakers, stents, and minimally invasive delivery tools, to name but a few.
Chemical and Materials Sciences
The approach DBC takes to the chemical and materials science sector is as fittingly interdisciplinary as the versatile attorneys who are our top practitioners within it. One former chemical engineer is now our top trademark attorney; another is prominent in our patent work on behalf of one of the world’s biggest memory device manufacturers. Even DBC’s top patent litigator has a background in chemistry. All continue to work on chemical matters, bringing to that work a mental dexterity strengthened by the other aspects of their practice.
In the chemical field, we have experience in area such as food processing, plastics formulation and processing, and ink formulation. Our materials science experience includes many aspects suggested by the other technical areas listed here, such as conductive polymers and process manufacturing, engineering, and testing.
We secure effective patent protection through our thorough understanding of various optical principles and our extensive experience applying them. DBC attorneys know the difference between a Michelson interferometer and a confocal microscope, and appreciate inventions that capture and analyze light to determine characteristics of various materials or articles.
Example clients use optics to perform tests on semiconductors, evaluate characteristics of a cornea, and display interactive content in a virtual reality environment.