our services

The practice of Oppedahl Patent Law Firm LLC is limited to patent, trademark, copyright, and related intellectual property matters.

For its clients, OPLF prepares, files, and prosecutes patent applications and trademark applications in the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Through relationships with associates in other countries, OPLF provides patent and trademark services around the world. Some highly valued foreign-associate relationships go back a decade or more.

OPLF carries out investigations and provides opinions to its clients on a range of intellectual property subjects, including:

  • analysis of patents owned by third parties and adversaries, often aimed at opinions regarding freedom to operate
  • representation of a client that is the target of a due-diligence inquiry, whether related to a potential acquisition, a public offering of stock, or strategic business relationship
  • evaluating strengths and weaknesses of an intellectual property portfolio
  • advising a client as to freedom to operate relative to trademark, design patent, and trade-dress rights of others

For patent and trademark firms around the world, OPLF handles a wide range of matters, including:

  • Paris Convention filings of patent and trademark applications in the USPTO
  • entry into the US national stage from PCT applications
  • carrying-out of renewals in the USPTO of trademark registrations owned by companies around the world
  • attending to provisional refusals of protection in Madrid Protocol trademark applications
  • providing strategic advice including freedom-to-operate opinions

A particular strength of the firm is in the area of design patent protection and enforcement, benefiting from prosecution of well over one hundred US design patents, and from enforcement activity in over one hundred design patent infringement matters.

On several occasions in recent years, a company with a sizeable and troubled intellectual property portfolio has come to OPLF, asking OPLF to "clean up" the portfolio. This is particularly challenging work, often requiring a detailed review of the entire portfolio in a very short time, to identify docket dates and action items. The broader goal in some cases has been the identification of more important and less important portions of the portfolio, requiring a substantive review by experienced attorneys of OPLF. A related goal is identifying cases where claims were poorly drafted, and doing new claim drafting where possible to overcome previous deficiencies. Such cleanup depends not only upon the judgment of attorneys, but also upon the skills of experienced administrative staff.