REGISTERED PATENT ATTORNEYS IN SALT LAKE CITY UTAH
Create It. Own It.
Capture and protect your vision, thinking, skill, labor, time, money, services and reputation with the strategic use of patents, trademarks, and copyrights.
At Pate, Nelson & Hill, we are registered patent attorneys that understand the creativity that goes into creating a successful business. That’s why our law firm is dedicated to helping businesses protect the output and products of that creativity.
As a full-service intellectual property law firm, Pate, Nelson & Hill assists clients in converting their creativity into property that can be owned and monetized. Our years of education, training, and experience enable us to handle complex IP-related tasks with skill and proficiency, and in a way that is tailored to the unique characteristics of your business.
Unlike many intellectual property law firms which rely heavily on inexperienced associates or trainees to perform their work, Pate, Nelson & Hill is made up of senior patent attorneys with many years of experience. That experience leads to higher quality service and reduces errors of judgement that can cost your business time and money.
Intellectual property (IP) may be used to capture your vision, thinking, skill, labor, time, money, and other inputs to your products, services, and reputation. Patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets, with related licenses and enforcement, are the primary types of intellectual property that are available. Without them, no idea is protectible. If you create it, own it as an asset. That’s intellectual property.
If you have questions about intellectual property and/or how we can help protect your creativity, please call us at 801-284-7000 or email us at info@patenelsonhill.com. One of our attorneys would be happy to assist you.
As a full-service intellectual property law firm, Pate, Nelson & Hill assists clients in converting their creativity into property that can be owned and monetized. Our years of education, training, and experience enable us to handle complex IP-related tasks with skill and proficiency, and in a way that is tailored to the unique characteristics of your business.
Unlike many intellectual property law firms which rely heavily on inexperienced associates or trainees to perform their work, Pate, Nelson & Hill is made up of senior patent attorneys with many years of experience. That experience leads to higher quality service and reduces errors of judgement that can cost your business time and money.
Intellectual property (IP) may be used to capture your vision, thinking, skill, labor, time, money, and other inputs to your products, services, and reputation. Patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets, with related licenses and enforcement, are the primary types of intellectual property that are available. Without them, no idea is protectible. If you create it, own it as an asset. That’s intellectual property.
If you have questions about intellectual property and/or how we can help protect your creativity, please call us at 801-284-7000 or email us at info@patenelsonhill.com. One of our attorneys would be happy to assist you.
A. JOHN (Jack) PATE
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Dr. Pate is a registered patent attorney with a B.S. in mechanical engineering, an M.S. in engineering, a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, and over a decade of industry experience prior to becoming a patent attorney. Much of Dr. Pate’s current practice is balanced between litigation and the writing and prosecuting of highly technological patents. However, he continues to apply his broad experience to all areas of intellectual property law. These areas include drafting and prosecuting patents directed to a wide range of manufacturing, software, and medical technologies, intellectual property licensing, and dispute resolution, including litigation as well as arbitration and other alternative dispute resolution (ADR).
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DANIEL P. NELSON
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Mr. Nelson is a registered patent attorney with a B.S. in electrical engineering. Mr. Nelson's current practice focuses on preparing and prosecuting both domestic and foreign patent applications, performing patent portfolio analysis and management, preparing non-infringement and invalidity opinions, and providing intellectual property strategic planning and counseling. Mr. Nelson has extensive experience taking patent applications through the USPTO appeal and accelerated examination processes. Mr. Nelson has personally drafted over 500 patent applications in a wide variety of technological areas, including artificial intelligence, cloud computing, computer hardware, software, communications systems, semiconductors, database technology, optical systems, down-hole drilling, networking, batteries and battery chemistries, electrical circuits, ceramics, business methods, medical devices, and mechanical devices.
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GORDON K. HILL
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Mr. Hill is a registered patent attorney with a B.S. in chemistry. Mr. Hill’s current practice includes both litigation (enforcing, defending) and prosecution (application, filing and negotiation) of intellectual property. Experienced in litigating patents and trademarks in state and federal courts, Mr. Hill also writes and prosecutes applications for patents and trademarks before the United States Patent and Trademark Office. His experiences from both litigation and prosecution improve his ability to meet client business objectives, and prepare patentability options, invalidity opinions, and other due diligence reports.
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MICHAEL PATE
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Mr. Pate is a registered patent attorney with a B.S. in mechanical engineering and an M.S. in electrical engineering. Mr. Pate’s IP practice includes patent prosecution, patent portfolio management, transactions, due diligence work, agreements, opinions (including validity, infringement, patentability, right-to-practice (RTP), and freedom-to-operate (FTO) opinions), counseling, offensive and defensive patent issues, licensing, and litigation. He also serves as an expert witness in technical and intellectual property legal issues. He works with foreign IP firms and foreign clients with respect to domestic and international patent prosecution, including Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) work. Mr. Pate's technical focus of his practice includes many areas of software, artificial intelligence, machine learning, internet of things, computer technology, automotive technology, communications, networks, databases, datacenters, cloud computing, internet systems, and many other areas.
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HAL BAIRD
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Mr. Baird is a registered patent attorney with a B.S. in computer information systems and an M.S. in computer engineering (expected March, 2024). Mr. Baird’s practice includes patent preparation and prosecution with an emphasis in the software and mechanical arts. Mr. Baird's practice also includes intellectual property litigation including patent infringement, trademark infringement, and unfair competition. Mr. Baird began his legal career in the Army Judge Advocate General's Corps practicing in the areas of criminal prosecution, the law of land warfare, and human resources law. Before entering law school, Mr. Baird worked for the Department of the Army at Fort Huachuca, Arizona where he developed and programmed computer expert systems to perform battlefield intelligence analysis.
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Areas of Practice
Patents
A patent protects a structure. A structure claimed in a patent may be a material or composition of matter, mechanical or electrical device, tool, machine, organized steps in a method of making or using anything, computer program, software architecture, or chemical process.
Trademarks
A trademark is a symbol of your reputation. A trademark or service mark serves as a "designation of origin" for your goods or services. It may be protected by common law, just because you used it, but may obtain more rights through a federal trademark registration. It may be a name, logo or other image, slogan, song, phrase, etc. that becomes recognized as identifying your company’s product or service.
Copyrights
A copyright is a registration of a creator’s right to control how a creative work (e.g., literary, musical, dramatic, sculpture, painting, or drawing work) is used. Copyright law protects the creative expression of an idea fixed in a tangible medium. Another cannot copy, perform, record, revise, or otherwise replicate a copyrighted work without a license.
Trade Secrets
A trade secret is information, not generally known, that has commercial value (competitive advantage) because it is not generally known. If it is disclosed under a duty of confidentiality, the owner can sue one who breaches that confidentiality. Typical trade secrets include customer lists, research in marketing or technology, proprietary processes, formulas, and so forth.
Litigation
Litigation is a lawsuit to enforce a right. Your rights denied or infringed by others are a lawsuit away from enforcement. Intellectual property protection is enforced by suing violators of your intellectual property rights. Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) such as mediation or arbitration may be faster, less expensive, and more satisfactory. Mediation is negotiation facilitated by a referee-type neutral, arbitration a legal decision by a private judge.
IP Licensing
Intellectual property rights in a patent, trademark, copyright, or trade secret can be sold (assigned), or rented (licensed) to others. A license agreement is a contract to do so. Licensing is one way to monetize intellectual property.
How do we create and protect your intellectual property rights?
Protecting your intellectual property usually begins with a consultation to determine what intellectual property you have or may have a right to own, followed by creating a patent, trademark, or copyright application, or trade secret protection process. This may require consulting, advising, investigating facts, researching law, drafting applications for patents, trademark registration, copyright registration, or preparing documentation and training for protecting a trade secret.
Creating and enforcing intellectual property may involve researching, writing, and filing pleadings, motions, complaints, petitions, documents, arguments, and other legal requests or responses. We file with state and federal courts, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), the Library of Congress (LOC), and other tribunals. We argue and negotiate before these courts, agencies and tribunals
Technologies include almost everything in engineering, manufacturing, software, computers, medical devices and procedures, electronics, chemistry, and biotechnology.
Creating and enforcing intellectual property may involve researching, writing, and filing pleadings, motions, complaints, petitions, documents, arguments, and other legal requests or responses. We file with state and federal courts, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), the Library of Congress (LOC), and other tribunals. We argue and negotiate before these courts, agencies and tribunals
Technologies include almost everything in engineering, manufacturing, software, computers, medical devices and procedures, electronics, chemistry, and biotechnology.
Why Choose Us?
Better not Bigger
Senior, experienced, patent attorneys do your work. We find no substitute for deep understanding, high creativity, broad perspective, profound wisdom, and informed strategy. These traits are only available from years of education, experience, training, and thought. No pyramid of layered incompetence and miscommunication has a place here.
Exceptional Quality
A senior patent attorney in the western states called the quality of our work the best he had seen, including the top partners he had known in the largest firms in this multistate region. This is big praise for a firm that intentionally stays small.
Industry and Legal Experience
Navigating technology, business, and law, we capture ideas, creativity, and good will, creating from them an intellectual property portfolio that can be owned, bought, sold, rented, licensed, and otherwise put to work for your benefit.
Registered Patent Attorneys
Only 3 % of all attorneys qualify as patent attorneys. To qualify as a registered patent attorney requires a federal test and registration in patent law as well as the regular state bar examination and admission. To take the exam requires the equivalent of a bachelor's degree in one of the accepted engineering or science disciplines.
SMALLER BY DESIGN
because creative genius does not run in herds