Litigation Defense Services

Being sued, or receiving a demand letter, is rarely the moment to start learning about the claim being asserted against you. Whether it’s a patent infringement suit, a trademark counterfeiting complaint naming you as a Schedule A defendant, a demand letter from a high-volume copyright plaintiff over a single stock photo, a trade secret or CADRA claim from a former employer, or a companion FDUTPA count layered on top of any of these — the first 10 days after service typically determine how the rest of the case goes.

Our Miami litigation defense attorneys represent businesses and individuals accused of patent, trademark, copyright, and trade secret infringement, and the related state-law claims that frequently ride alongside them, across Florida’s federal and state courts.

Our Litigation Defense Practice

Four kinds of IP claims, and the state-law claims that ride along with them

Intellectual property enforcement has grown more aggressive, more automated, and — in several corners of the practice — more templated over the past several years. A single demand letter today might assert patent infringement, a trademark counterfeiting claim naming a business as an anonymous “Schedule A” defendant, a copyright claim over a single stock photograph, or a trade secret and computer-access claim against a former employee — sometimes more than one at once, with a Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act (FDUTPA) count layered on top. Each of these claims has its own procedural rules, its own deadlines, and its own defenses, and the right first move is rarely the same for any two of them.

We represent clients on the defense side of all four core IP claim types, and the related Florida statutory claims that frequently accompany them, coordinating a single defense strategy rather than treating each count as a separate fire to put out.

Patent Infringement Defense

Non-infringement, invalidity, and the PTAB as a parallel track

A patent infringement defense starts with the same claim-by-claim comparison a plaintiff has to make: does the accused product or process actually meet every element of at least one asserted claim? Where it doesn’t, a non-infringement defense can end the case outright. Where the claims do appear to read on the accused product, we turn to invalidity — prior art the examiner never considered, indefiniteness, lack of enablement or written description, and, for patents claiming abstract ideas or natural phenomena, patent-eligible subject matter under § 101.

Critically, invalidity doesn’t have to be litigated only in district court. A defendant can petition the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) for inter partes review, post-grant review, or ex parte reexamination as a parallel or alternative track — often faster and less expensive than a full district court validity trial, and, if the district court agrees to stay the case pending the PTAB’s decision, a way to resolve validity before spending heavily on discovery and expert reports. We also evaluate willfulness exposure (which can support enhanced damages up to 3x under 35 U.S.C. § 284) early, since the record built in the first months of a case shapes that exposure for the rest of it.

Full detail on all five PTAB proceedings — IPR, PGR, ex parte reexamination, derivation, and supplemental examination — is available in our Patent Matters materials.

Trademark Infringement & Schedule A Litigation Defense

From a standard infringement defense to an ex parte asset freeze

Standard trademark infringement defense runs through the familiar likelihood-of-confusion factors — the strength of the plaintiff’s mark, similarity of the marks and goods, actual confusion evidence, and the parties’ trade channels — along with defenses like fair use, prior use, genericness, abandonment, and laches. But a growing share of trademark litigation today doesn’t look like a standard two-party dispute at all.

What “Schedule A” litigation is

Trademark owners increasingly bring mass online-counterfeiting suits against dozens or hundreds of anonymous e-commerce sellers at once, naming them not in the complaint’s caption but in a sealed exhibit — the “Schedule A” — identifying them only by storefront name, seller ID, or marketplace listing. Trademark filings nationally rose roughly 25% in 2025 alone, and a substantial share of that growth has been attributed to this Schedule A model, which has been used in an estimated 900-plus lawsuits naming a cumulative 600,000-plus defendants over the past decade — including cases filed in Florida’s own Middle and Southern Districts.

Defense strategy for a Schedule A defendant

• Move immediately. Frozen marketplace funds and suspended listings are often a seller’s entire cash flow — the window to seek dissolution or modification of the TRO, or to be heard before a preliminary injunction issues, is short and unforgiving.
• Challenge personal jurisdiction. Many Schedule A defendants are located outside the United States and may lack the minimum contacts with the specific forum that due process requires.
• Challenge joinder. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 20 permits joining defendants only where claims arise from the same transaction or occurrence — unrelated sellers swept into one mass complaint are a frequent target for a motion to sever.
• Challenge service and the scope of the freeze. Electronic service authorized under Rule 4(f)(3) and the breadth of an asset restraint are both subject to challenge.
• Raise substantive defenses. Genuine goods and first-sale defenses, authorized-reseller status, licensing, and non-infringement remain available — a mass-filed complaint doesn’t change what the plaintiff still has to prove.
• Negotiate strategically. Because Schedule A cases resolve overwhelmingly through early settlement, dismissal, or default rather than trial, a fast, well-documented response often produces a materially better outcome than waiting out the preliminary injunction hearing.

Copyright Infringement & Serial-Plaintiff (“Image Theft”) Defense

Verifying the registration before responding to the demand

General copyright infringement defense evaluates the same three elements a plaintiff must prove — a valid copyright, access to the work, and copying outside a recognized exception — and the defenses available: fair use, independent creation, license, public domain, non-copyrightable material, and the 3-year statute of limitations.

A significant share of the copyright demand letters and complaints we see, however, come from a narrower category: high-volume plaintiffs alleging unauthorized use of a single photograph or video — often a stock or licensing image used on a website, blog, or social media post years earlier. Florida’s Southern and Middle District federal courts have become especially active venues for this kind of single-image litigation, brought by plaintiffs who file dozens or hundreds of substantially similar suits each year. Our copyright team has considerable experience defending against these claims.

Being named in one of these suits doesn’t mean the claim is without merit — but the pattern-based, settlement-driven nature of this litigation means a fast, informed response regularly produces a far better outcome than paying the first number in the demand letter.

Full detail on registration timing, the Copyright Claims Board, and generative AI and software copyrightability is available in our Copyright Matters materials.

Trade Secret Misappropriation Defense

Testing whether the information — and the theft allegation — actually holds up

Trade secret claims, whether brought under the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act or Florida’s Uniform Trade Secrets Act, both require the plaintiff to prove the information actually qualifies as a trade secret and was actually misappropriated. Both elements are frequently contestable:

• No protectable trade secret. Information that is publicly available, independently known in the industry, or that the plaintiff never treated as confidential doesn’t qualify.
• No reasonable measures to protect secrecy. A plaintiff that didn’t use NDAs, access controls, or confidentiality policies has a hard time proving the second statutory element.
• Independent development or reverse engineering. Both are recognized as proper means of acquiring the same information, and defeat a misappropriation claim.
• No improper means or breach of a duty. Where an employee’s knowledge is general skill and experience rather than a specific confidential process, using it for a new employer isn’t misappropriation.

We also evaluate the injunctive relief a plaintiff seeks at the outset of these cases — a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction limiting a former employee’s new job can be won or narrowed early, and often defines the practical stakes of the entire case more than the eventual damages verdict does.

The complete DTSA and FUTSA elements and remedies comparison is available in our Trade Secret Matters webpage.

CADRA Defense

Florida’s Computer Abuse and Data Recovery Act, Fla. Stat. §§ 668.801–.805

CADRA claims are frequently pled alongside DTSA and FUTSA counts whenever a departing employee or outside party accessed a computer system — precisely because CADRA doesn’t require the plaintiff to prove the accessed information was a trade secret at all, only that access to a “protected computer” was unauthorized and caused harm or loss. That lower bar makes CADRA claims easier to plead, but also means several distinct defenses are available:

• Authorized access. An employee or contractor who had legitimate credentials and used them within the scope of that authorization generally hasn’t violated the statute.
• Statutory exclusions. Fla. Stat. § 668.805 excludes categories of conduct the legislature chose not to reach.
• No harm or loss. The statute requires the plaintiff show actual harm or loss resulting from the access, not just the access itself.
• Statute of limitations. CADRA claims must be brought within 3 years of the violation, or when it reasonably should have been discovered.

Because CADRA’s remedies include disgorgement of the defendant’s profits and recovery of the information itself — including all copies — a CADRA count often carries more practical leverage in a case than the trade secret claims filed alongside it, which is why we evaluate it as its own claim rather than an afterthought to the DTSA/FUTSA counts.

FDUTPA & Related State-Law Causes of Action

Fla. Stat. § 501.201 et seq. — the companion claim that shows up in almost every IP case

Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act (FDUTPA) prohibits unfair or deceptive acts or practices in trade or commerce, and it shows up as a companion count in a substantial share of the IP litigation we defend — layered onto a trademark, copyright, or trade secret claim, or asserted on its own where a plaintiff believes conduct was deceptive but can’t establish a registered right was infringed.

We defend FDUTPA counts the same way we defend the underlying IP claim they’re attached to: testing whether the plaintiff can actually prove each element, rather than treating the state-law count as an automatic add-on to whatever federal claim it accompanies.

Our Defense Process

The first move looks different for every claim type

Across every claim type, the same discipline applies: assess the case honestly and quickly, identify the defenses and deadlines that actually matter, and build a strategy — settlement, motion practice, or trial — around what the evidence supports rather than around the number in the plaintiff’s first letter.

Full Capability

Our Litigation Defense Services Include