Litigation & Enforcement

A registration, a mark, or a confidential process is only as valuable as a business’s ability to stop someone else from taking it. In today’s competitive climate, an IP owner is regularly required to enforce its rights against a competitor, a knock-off, or an outright infringer — and a business accused of infringement needs an equally clear-eyed defense. The right path depends on what’s being protected: patents run through federal court and the PTAB, trademarks through federal or state court and the TTAB, copyrights through federal court or the Copyright Claims Board, and trade secrets through federal and Florida state law working side by side.

Our Florida IP litigation attorneys handle enforcement and defense across all four — patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets — from the first cease and desist letter through trial and appeal.

Cease and Desist Letters

Often the fastest, least expensive way to resolve a dispute

In today’s competitive business climate, a patent, trademark, copyright, or trade secret owner is often required to enforce its rights against a competitor, a knock-off, or an infringer. Many times, this can be resolved by having one of our Miami IP attorneys draft, prepare, and serve a well-articulated cease and desist letter — providing notice to the infringer to conform its conduct and stop the infringing activity, built on the pre-filing investigation and risk calibration described on our dedicated Cease and Desist Letters page.

Just as often, a manufacturer, distributor, or vendor receives a cease and desist letter from an IP owner alleging infringement or unfair competition. We help clients on the receiving end too — responding to allegations, contacting opposing counsel, and negotiating a resolution. Cease and desist letters are frequently based on misperception or incomplete information, but ignoring one can still result in costly, unnecessary litigation. A timely, well-reasoned response — sometimes no more than a phone call — resolves many of these disputes before they become lawsuits, as discussed further on our Responses to Demand Letters page.

Patent Litigation & the PTAB

Federal court for damages and injunctions; the PTAB for validity

It is often necessary to enforce patent rights against a competitor. Patent litigation requires a patent holder to file suit in federal court against the infringer — the PTAB can invalidate a patent, but it cannot award damages or issue an injunction. Before any complaint is filed, we conduct the pre-filing investigation needed to determine whether a good-faith basis for infringement exists, comparing the accused product or process against the patent’s claims element by element. Once that basis is confirmed, our patent litigation team prepares and files the complaint, proceeds through claim construction (Markman) practice, technical depositions, and expert discovery on infringement and damages, and takes the matter to trial and, if necessary, appeal to the Federal Circuit.

Increasingly, patent disputes run on two tracks at once. A defendant accused of infringement can petition the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) to challenge the patent’s validity administratively, often faster and at lower cost than a full district court validity defense:

A full comparison of grounds, institution standards, decision-makers, estoppel effects, and timelines for all five proceedings is available in our Patent Matters materials.

Our team has handled some of the most noteworthy and largest patent infringement disputes in Florida, and has defended allegations of infringement in federal courts throughout the country, for both Florida- and Latin America-based technology ventures — including evaluating a PTAB challenge as a parallel or alternative track to a district court defense.

Trademark Litigation & Enforcement

From a watch-report hit to a federal courtroom

Often a cease and desist letter goes unanswered, proves ineffective, or is simply unwarranted given the facts. In these scenarios, a trademark owner may need to enforce its rights through state or federal litigation. Our team has handled dozens of complex trademark disputes for some of Florida and Latin America’s most valuable trademark portfolios, litigating not only in Florida but in federal courts throughout the United States and through international arbitration — taking depositions, participating in hearings before federal judges, drafting and prosecuting trademark enforcement complaints and motions, and negotiating advantageous settlements. Miami trademark attorney Robert H. Thornburg has also served as a trademark expert in complex trademark disputes nationally.

Much of this litigation starts upstream of a lawsuit, with an ongoing trademark watch program that flags a conflict before it becomes expensive:

Details on the clearance-search and watchdog platforms behind that program are in our Trademark Matters materials, and full UDRP and ACPA procedure is in our Domain Name Disputes materials.

Copyright Litigation & Enforcement

Federal court, or the Copyright Claims Board for smaller disputes

Copyright infringement is the violation of any of a copyright owner’s exclusive rights, and proving it requires three things: a valid copyright, access to the work by the alleged infringer, and copying that falls outside a recognized exception such as fair use. We help clients on both sides of that analysis — pursuing infringement claims for copyright owners, and defending clients accused of infringement by evaluating fair use, independent creation, license, public domain, non-copyrightable material, and statute-of-limitations defenses.

Florida’s Southern and Middle District federal courts have also become active venues for a distinct category of copyright litigation: single-photograph or single-video infringement claims brought by high-volume plaintiffs who file many substantially similar suits each year. Our team of copyright attorneys has considerable experience defending claims brought by these types of copyright owners — verifying the registration and its timing, evaluating the statute of limitations and license defenses, and assessing whether a demand is better resolved through negotiation, the Copyright Claims Board, or a defended federal case.

Full detail on registration strategy, the Copyright Claims Board and CASE Act, generative AI and software copyrightability, and serial-plaintiff defense is available in our Copyright Matters materials.

Trade Secret Litigation & Enforcement

Federal and Florida law, working together — with no administrative shortcut

Unlike patents, trademarks, and copyrights, trade secret disputes have no PTAB- or CCB-style administrative alternative — every trade secret case runs through federal or state court, typically under two or three overlapping statutes at once: the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA), Florida’s Uniform Trade Secrets Act (FUTSA), and, where a departing employee or outside actor accessed a computer system without authorization, Florida’s Computer Abuse and Data Recovery Act (CADRA).

The complete DTSA, FUTSA, and CADRA elements and remedies comparison — including the ex parte seizure standard unique to the DTSA — is in our Trade Secret Matters materials.

We handle both sides of trade secret litigation: pursuing misappropriation claims for owners against departing employees and competitors, and defending clients accused of misappropriation, including challenging whether the information at issue actually qualifies as a trade secret and whether reasonable measures were taken to protect it.

Unfair Competition & Dilution

Protection that doesn’t always depend on a federal registration

Where a business has not registered a well-known, source-identifying mark, an unfair competition claim under the Lanham Act may still be available. We prepare, file, enforce, and defend unfair competition claims in both state and federal court, preparing motions and other filings the same way we would for a registered-trademark enforcement action.

Separately, where a well-known and famous mark is used on an unrelated category of goods or services, a trademark dilution claim may be available on a tarnishment or blurring theory. Our trademark attorneys have experience litigating and defending these claims under both the federal and Florida state dilution statutes.

Choosing the Right Forum

Four types of IP, four different maps of where a fight actually happens

Patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets are often discussed together as “intellectual property,” but each runs through its own court system, its own administrative bodies, and its own signature remedies. Getting the forum right at the outset shapes everything that follows — cost, timeline, and what relief is actually available at the end.

We help clients identify which forum — or combination of forums — actually fits a given dispute, rather than defaulting to the most familiar one, and we coordinate parallel proceedings (a PTAB petition alongside a district court stay motion, for example) so that one track doesn’t undercut the other.

Full Capability

Our Litigation & Enforcement Services Include