My mission is to strengthen your business, ensure compliance with privacy laws, HIPAA, AI laws, and protect you while enabling you to contract with vendors and new customers. My main areas of practice are technology law, intellectual property law, and business law. I can help you grow your business, including guiding you through negotiations with business partners and vendors, advising you on how to protect your brand and trade secrets, and keeping you up to date on the latest privacy and cyber security requirements.
My goal is to help you identify your current and future needs, and to address issues that you may not have anticipated yet. I’ll listen to your challenges, concerns and ideas, provide honest advice, keep an open flow of communication, and be a strong, determined advocate for your interests.
I am licensed in Pennsylvania and am admitted to practice in all three Federal districts within the Commonwealth. My experience includes jury and non-jury trials, Pennsylvania Superior Court briefs and argument, and litigating and mediating cases in Federal court. Past areas of practice have included family law and criminal law. A more detailed biography is located here.
About Wilftek LLC
I am a Senior Attorney with Wilftek LLC, a technology and intellectual property firm based in the Philadelphia area which represents clients at various stages of their business development – from the initial spark of an idea, to building relationships with business partners and customers, to planning for strategic growth. We help clients protect their business, brand, and creative assets.
My mission is to strengthen your business, ensure compliance with privacy laws, HIPAA, AI laws, and protect you while enabling you to contract with vendors and new customers. My main areas of practice are technology law, intellectual property law, and business law. I can help you grow your business, including guiding you through negotiations with business partners and vendors, advising you on how to protect your brand and trade secrets, and keeping you up to date on the latest privacy and cyber security requirements.
My goal is to help you identify your current and future needs, and to address issues that you may not have anticipated yet. I’ll listen to your challenges, concerns and ideas, provide honest advice, keep an open flow of communication, and be a strong, determined advocate for your interests.
I am licensed in Pennsylvania and am admitted to practice in all three Federal districts within the Commonwealth. My experience includes jury and non-jury trials, Pennsylvania Superior Court briefs and argument, and litigating and mediating cases in Federal court. Past areas of practice have included family law and criminal law. A more detailed biography is located here.
About Wilftek LLC
I am a Senior Attorney with Wilftek LLC, a technology and intellectual property firm based in the Philadelphia area which represents clients at various stages of their business development – from the initial spark of an idea, to building relationships with business partners and customers, to planning for strategic growth. We help clients protect their business, brand, and creative assets.
Contact Us For a Free Consultation
For a free legal consultation, call 610-544-8922 now, or use the form below.
Areas of Practice
Intellectual Property Law
Experienced in copyright, trademark, licensing, trade secret protection strategy, contract, and other areas of Intellectual Property law. Each area has its unique requirements. We can protect an owner’s rights, and protect a business’ ability to leverage and protect intellectual property rights.
Compliance, Cybersecurity, and Business Law
Businesses must comply with an increasing number of laws focused on protecting the privacy and security of customers, employees, and business partners. Insurance companies have successfully used non-compliance as a reason to not cover costly insurance claims. Hope is not a legal strategy – find out what your compliance requirements are, and whether you are meeting those requirements. We can set up or review your business structure and your employee and vendor agreements, to ensure that they meet your current and future needs.
Articles
Copying Technical Standards Referenced in Laws Held to Be Fair Use by D.C. Court of Appeals
In American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc., the D.C. Court of Appeals held on Sept. 12, 2023 that "Public Resource’s copying of material [217 industry standards] incorporated by reference into law, for free dissemination to the public, was fair use." This is likely not the last word on this subject*: the case began in 2013, was appealed, then stayed pending the Supreme Court's decision in the 2020 case of Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org (which held [...Read More...]
Not So Happy Together – The Turtles vs. SiriusXM Copyright Case
What happens when Congress is unable - for almost 50 years - to figure out how to protect recorded music? Specifically, music recorded before 1972? Messy litigation involving the Turtles is what happens. First, some background. Almost 50 years ago, Congress passed the Sound Recording Amendment to the 1909 Copyright Act, which provided copyright protection to sound recordings created on or after February 15, 1972. However, there was no Federal law requiring that royalties be [...Read More...]
The Washington Football Team vs. Trademark Squatters – The Sequel
On July 13, 2020, the era of the NFL's Washington Redskins ended (following pressure from the public and from corporate sponsors) and a new era began. Unfortunately, it was - and remains - an unnamed era. The team currently is called "The Washington Football Team" - it's better than "The Washington Insert Name Here" but not by much. Why the delay in getting a new name? Part of it could be related to the issues [...Read More...]
Supreme Court Fights Abuses of the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act
For 35 years, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) has been a powerful weapon in law enforcement's arsenal against computer hackers. Essentially, it criminalized the standard definition of hacking - accessing information on a computer, where the user lacks authorization to do so. But what happens when someone is authorized to access the information, but then misuses the information? For example, a police officer who accepted a bribe and then accessed a vehicle database [...Read More...]
What Is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act?
Over the past few years, you may have heard various people express support for or opposition to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. While President Trump and others have accused Internet content publishers of using it to discriminate against conservative points of view, the reality is quite different and actually not political at all. While people will often disagree about specific examples of political speech online, the irony is that political speech would have [...Read More...]
Where Have All the Soundtracks Gone?
When fans of the TV show “Dawson’s Creek” watch it on Netflix, it will sound very different. This is because the theme song (Paula Cole’s "I Don't Want to Wait") has been replaced by Jann Arden’s "Run Like Mad" due to lack of streaming and DVD rights to the Paula Cole song. Dawson’s Creek has plenty of company in this area. Before the rise of streaming services, TV shows could save money by paying for [...Read More...]
You Can’t Copyright That?
Copyright law often isn't as well understood as, for example, criminal defense, or family law. Most people may know that if you write a book, perform a song, or take a photograph, you can obtain copyright protection for those works. But what about items that you can't protect through copyright? Here are some examples of items that aren't eligible for copyright protection: Ideas. To be eligible for copyright protection, works must be "fixed in [...Read More...]
U.S. v. Arthrex: A Battle for Power over Patent Judges
One of my favorite aspects of the law is that something can be standard practice, or settled law, until a creative lawyer or court pulls it apart, turns it on its head, and a new paradigm is born. Think of Brown v. Board of Education, Miranda v. Arizona, or Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Each of these decisions upended the prior paradigm. A new case may be joining this list: United States v. Arthrex [...Read More...]
Confused about privacy compliance?
The European Union’s GDPR and California’s CCPA aren’t the new kids on the block anymore.
In just a few years, 19 states passed comprehensive data privacy laws, all of which will be in effect by January 1, 2026.
Did you know: the criteria for whether a state’s privacy law applies to your business varies widely between the states. It depends on the type of business, type of data, number of consumers affected, and other factors.
GDPR
Recognized as the privacy standard outside the U.S., used as a template for other countries' privacy lawsGDPR
The E.U.’s General Data Protection Regulation went into effect in 2018, and remains the leading privacy standard.California's CCPA
Recognized as the leading state privacy law in the U.S. - but 18 states have taken a different approachCCPA
The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) is the leading privacy standard for the U.S., though it only applies to California residents.The CCPA has protections on selling and sharing data, and is enforced by a new agency: the CPPA (no, not a typo!)