Prometheus: offers intelligent and aggressive legal expertise in Copyright Law matters, helping you to protect your expressions regardless of their form. Our Intellectual Property Attorney, Mr. Aly Ebrahimzadeh, Esq. has represented various companies to protect their copyrighted work from infringement by way of litigation prevention strategies, the preparation of careful copyright notices, and the drafting of contracts that safeguard the company’s artistic and literary intellectual property. When copyright litigation is required, we are poised to dissect the relevant issues of law, create winning legal arguments, and work with a team of hand selected experts in your industry to leverage a winning resolution, be it in Federal or State court or at the negotiations table.
“Thank you, Aly, for the excellent quality of legal representation that you provide my company every week. As a startup, we are blessed to have a General Counsel attorney like you – your sharp work, lightning speed, intelligent strategizing, and affordable rates give us the edge we need to beat the big boys!”
- Software Business CEO Client Testimonial during Representation in Intellectual Property and Contractual Transactions, March 21, 2009.
Supporting the Creative Mind – A New Kind Of Attorney
Mr. Ebrahimzadeh is an aggressive and creative litigator who serves our Intellectual Property clients as a unique ally in transactions and lawsuits. He is experienced as an attorney in various high-stakes Intellectual Property matters, and he is also particularly sensitive to the work of an artist, given the fact that Mr. Ebrahimzadeh is himself a performing musician, a long-time writer of creative fiction, and a multimedia fine artist. Mr. Ebrahimzadeh is fluent with the artistic community in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, and Santa Cruz, California, and he has worked with California Lawyers for the Arts to provide artists in the San Francisco Bay Area with potent legal expertise when it matters most.
Copyright law is a highly complex field that requires the intelligence, foresight, and exacting legal skills of a potent Intellectual Property Attorney. Mr. Ebrahimzadeh offers clients in San Jose, Palo Alto, and the San Francisco Bay Area with precisely this essential combination of traits. You will immediately appreciate his refined expertise in Intellectual Property Law, as well as his commitment to helping you to avoid litigation whenever possible while preparing your most effective legal strategies to dominate the courtroom when a Copyright Infringement lawsuit is the last and best option.
An Overview of US Copyright Law
Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the US Constitution states, “The Congress shall have Power [. . .] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” This is the Copyright Clause of the US Constitution, and it is the basis for the legal protection our federal governments offers to works of authorship that have been tangibly expressed such as computer software, books, music, and works of art. It is important to note that Copyright protections are applied only to expressions of ideas and not to the ideas themselves, as noted in section 102(b) of the Copyright Act. 17 USC Sec. 102(b).
The Library of Congress registers copyrights for a term equal to the life of the artist plus 70 years, however no actual act such as registration of the work is required since copyright protection is automatic upon the work’s creation into a tangible and fixed format. For works created by more than one author, copyright protection lasts for 70 years after the last surviving author’s death. For works created anonymously or by use of a pseudonym, protection lasts 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation, whichever is shorter. For works created before January 1, 1978, Copyright Law varies a bit and we can clarify the specifics during our legal representation for you.
The main advantage of registering a copyright with the US Copyright Office in the Library of Congress is that you may bring a copyright infringement lawsuit only after having registered your work with the Copyright Office. Other advantages include giving the work’s author the ability to more easily evidence the infringement, to win statutory damages and attorney’s fees, and potentially to keep infringing copies of the work from being imported into the country.
Section 106 of the 1976 Copyright Act gives authors the legal right to reproduce the copyrighted work, to produce derivatives of the work, to distribute and sell the work to the public, and to perform and publicly display the work. Section 107 and subsequent sections of the Copyright Act provide for various exceptions to copyright protection, most notably the “fair use doctrine”.
The “fair use doctrine” involves a four-part test that determines if it is legal for somebody other than the author to use the copyrighted work. The doctrine considers (1) the purpose and character of the alleged infringer’s use of the work (the more the copyrighted work is uniquely transformed and enriched by your use, the less likely your use is infringing); (2) the nature of the copyrighted work (unpublished works and fictional works have more protection than published works and non-fiction works); (3) the amount and substantiality of the work taken; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market.
Where copyright infringement is proven, the Plaintiff may be entitled to economic damages, injunctions, statutory fees, attorney’s fees, and costs of litigation. The Defendant may even be guilty of a crime.
Prometheus: offers aggressive Copyright Infringement representation for Plaintiffs and Defendants in civil lawsuits and criminal defense trials in California State and Federal Courts, including the Federal District Court for Northern California, the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, and California Superior Courts in and around Alameda County, Santa Clara County, San Francisco County, San Mateo County, Marin County, and Santa Cruz County.
Related Webpages:
Patent Litigation
Intellectual Property Law
Related Article: Overview of US Patent Litigation and US Patent Law
