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
Third Party Cookies Crumble. Is Google’s Replacement Any Better?
As a scrappy Silicon Valley startup, Google's motto was "Don't Be Evil". The phrase was part of the employee Code of Conduct and was even the Wi-Fi password for its company shuttles. The phrase disappeared from the Code of Conduct in 2018, long after Google had become an Internet search giant and had begun acting the part. This includes aggressively collecting as much data as possible from users of its services and global users of [...Read More...]
New Copyright Laws: Tougher Enforcement and New “Small Claims Court”
At the end of December 2020, Congress passed an "omnibus" bill which justifiably received significant attention for funding the military and providing financial relief during the coronavirus pandemic. Included in the legislation were new laws relating to copyright: the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement (CASE) Act and the Protecting Lawful Streaming (CASE) Act. The CASE Act The CASE Act is a new mechanism for handling copyright claims. The new law creates a Copyright Claims Board [...Read More...]
Keeping Up with Fast-Changing Privacy Laws
How much personal data do you collect from customers, and what privacy laws apply to your business? Recent privacy violations have resulted in penalties of thousands or millions of dollars, with Facebook paying a record FTC fine of $5 billion. Every business needs to know its compliance requirements and potential exposure. Yet the current proliferation of privacy laws has made this increasingly expensive and difficult. The nexus of these laws is the need to protect [...Read More...]
Spirit v. Led Zeppelin Case Finally Ascends the Stairway to Heaven
After six years of litigation, Led Zeppelin has finally won. Michael Skidmore, the trustee for the estate of Spirit's guitarist Randy Wolfe, sued in 2014, claiming that Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" infringed Spirit's copyright in its song, "Taurus." On October 5, 2020, the Supreme Court denied Skidmore's request for a writ of certiorari after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against him in March 2020, which now ends the litigation. In 2016, a [...Read More...]
Cease and Desist Letters – What Would Bill Murray Do?
In the world of intellectual property, the "Cease and Desist" letter is king. These are letters from attorneys for the owner of a work or invention, sent to an alleged infringer of the owner's intellectual property rights. The letters cite the legal basis for their claim, may threaten doom, destruction, and huge financial damages, and are often quite stern. Overly aggressive cease and desist letters can backfire. The Lumen Database website (originally chillingeffects.org) began as [...Read More...]
Star Trek Copyright – Where No Court Has Gone Before
Two thousand years ago, the Roman historian Tacticus said that "victory is claimed by all, failure to one alone." Such is the fate of successful creative works, whether they are music, art, or television shows. In recent years, the Star Trek universe has expanded to include several new shows, including the successful "Star Trek: Discovery." Enter the copyright infringement lawsuits. Anas Abdin created a videogame over the course of several years between 2014 and 2017. [...Read More...]
Washington Redskins vs. Native Americans & Trademark Squatters
For almost 30 years, the NFL's Washington Redskins were involved in litigation over their team name. They recently decided to change the name, but they may now have to battle trademark squatters who have scooped up rights to likely replacement names. The Washington Redskins have been using the team name since 1933, and registered variations of the trademark starting in 1967. In 1992, Native American activist Suzan Harjo and other plaintiffs filed a petition to [...Read More...]
Netflix and the Air Force Battle for Space (Force)
In a story that would make a screenwriter jealous, it seems that the newly-minted U.S. Space Force may have lost trademark rights in the term "Space Force" to Netflix. On June 18, 2018, President Trump announced the U.S. Space Force which came to life on December 20, 2019, with the signing of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020, as a division of the Air Force. Netflix debuted its "Space Force" comedy series on May [...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!)