Criminal Law

• Criminal Defense
  Many lawyers in recent years are heard to describe themselves as practicing "Internet law". This can mean computer law, new media law, the law of contracts between HTML editors and their customers, entertainment law, intellectual property law, criminal law relating to pornography, law relating to online gambling, or anything else involving the Internet.
• Internet Crimes
  A review of many kinds of job postings and advertisements reveals that while there are hundreds of job openings advertised at any given time for patent law jobs, and dozens of job openings advertised at any given time for trademark law jobs, it is almost unheard-of to see a job listing for "computer law" or "new media law" or "Internet law". Instead, most of the times that these terms are used seem to be by lawyers who seek to inform the public about their fields of practice. It thus appears that "computer law" and "new media law" and "Internet law" are not so much career paths for those entering the legal profession, but are more like advertising categories for those who are already practicing law.

Business and Corporate Law

• Business Transactions
• Trade Secrets
  Depending on the country, there are sometimes ways to withdraw an application in advance of the 18-month publication date, thus protecting its trade secrets. Thus the applicant who wants to pursue patent protection outside of the U.S., and yet who wants to maintain trade secret protection if patent protection proves unlikely, has to make a decision about this before the 18 months are up.
• Intellectual Property
  There is another reason why the software author who is inclined to proceed pro se in applying for copyright protection might be well advised to seek advice of competent counsel. In our experience, it is rare that the only steps needed to attend to a client's intellectual property needs are copyright registration steps. It frequently develops that there are other aspects of the client's business that also require attention. A work may contain material prepared by subcontractors, or material recycled from a previous programming task. The software may call for design patent protection, utility patent protection, or trademark protection. The programmer may have failed to give enough attention to the placement and content of copyright notices. Dozens of other intellectual property issues (discussed elsewhere in this reference) may present themselves. A consultation with competent intellectual property counsel will improve the likelihood that these other aspects are considered.
• Antitrust
  Antitrust. The importance of antitrust law rises and falls with the decades, and may be helpful at some time in your career.

Health Law

• Medical Malpractice
  But on the whole, it is difficult to prosper as a lawyer if one does not have a strong understanding of the subjects that one's clients are dealing with. And technical fields are notoriously difficult for people to understand unless they have either good training or a natural knack for the subject. (Imagine attempting to do medical malpractice law if one not only had never dealt with a doctor or healer of any sort, but also had never been sick and had no understanding of human anatomy.) Concentrating in copyright or trademark law or "computer law" rather than patent law may reduce the needed technical knowledge, but if one is unfamiliar with the customs, usages, markets and whatnot of the technical people who are one's clients, one will still be at a disadvantage.

Trusts and Estates

• Power of Attorney
  A Madrid Protocol Power of Attorney. This may be emailed to us as a PDF, or may be faxed to us. USPTO does not need the original document.