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Cesari and McKenna provides legal counseling and representation to clients ranging from individuals to multinational corporations, primarily in technology and trade matters. The firm concentrates primarily in intellectual property, including patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets. It assists its clients in identifying, assessing, securing, and transferring its clients’ intellectual-property rights, in enforcing those rights before courts and administrative agencies, and in defending its clients against the enforcement actions of others. Cesari and McKenna also provides services in the legal aspects of organizing and structuring businesses and domestic and international transactions, usually where such businesses and transactions involve industrial, literary, or other intellectual-property rights.
For more than 45 years, Cesari and McKenna has served individuals as well as emerging and established companies, foreign and domestic. Early on, the firm became recognized particularly for its expertise in highly advanced and complex technologies such as computer architectures, software, and defense electronics. In the area of electro-optics technology, for example, it conducted what is believed to be the longest and most complex trade-secret suit ever tried in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and it has frequently been called upon to handle other major litigation involving complex technology and large stakes. But the firm also handles a complete range of technologies, from the most complex to the simplest. Indeed, it assists its clients in protecting rights in information and good will without regard to technology content: the firm’s daily practice includes counseling on copyright and trademark matters, and members of the firm routinely litigate and negotiate disputes over issues ranging from customer lists to trade names.
The firm’s experience in these and other areas has also been tapped in aid of strategic planning for high-technology enterprises. A good understanding of a technology and the potential channels for its fruitful application—and improper diversion—is crucial for tailoring an intellectual-property-protection program that is effective yet within the client’s economic means.
Cesari and McKenna adds value not only in the "nuts and bolts" of securing the most appropriate intellectual-property protection but also in strategic planning involving a wide range of technological, market, and regulatory environments. In this connection the firm often performs "technology audits" for companies whose key assets are their intellectual property, as well as for venture-capital firms and other investors in such companies. These audits are conducted by attorneys knowledgeable in technology, in patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, international and domestic trade regulations, and litigation.
The firm also has extensive expertise in licensing all forms of intellectual property, including patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, and know-how. It regularly assists clients in evaluating and structuring license agreements, in negotiating and drafting the agreements, and in enforcing their terms. Because the agreements often involve the restrictive terms required when advanced technology is transferred across national boundaries, the firm has been called upon to apply its expertise in international-competition laws and export- and investment-control disciplines.
The expertise that the firm’s attorneys have acquired in working daily with commercial articles’ technological features and manufacturing economics has also proved invaluable in dealing with customs matters involving such articles’ classifications and valuations. Its attorneys’ resultant ability to explain technology to customs officials has yielded its clients substantial savings in import duties.
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