Intellectual Property: Patenting and Trademarking
Intellectual Property as Assets
Whether you are a self-published author protecting your manuscripts, content creator, a beauty or wellness professional building a signature brand, or a food service provider developing original recipes, packaging, or catering, intellectual property matters to you. We will walk through the fundamentals of patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets as they apply to service-based and creative businesses. You will learn practical steps you can take right now to safeguard your assets.
Your Website, Marketing, and Your Customers: What the Law Expects
If your business has a website – whether you use it to book appointments, sell products, accept payments, share your portfolio, or simply tell people who you are – there are important legal requirements you should know about. We will discuss privacy policies, terms of use, online marketing, accessibility considerations, and what it means to collect customer information online. This portion of the webinar will give you a clear picture of your responsibilities to the consumers who visit your site, so you can build trust and stay compliant.
Artificial Intelligence: Opportunities and Risks for Your Business
AI tools are increasingly accessible to and useful for small businesses, including content generators that can help draft marketing copy to scheduling assistants and customer service chatbots. But AI also raises important questions for entrepreneurs and creators, in terms of protecting AI-generated content, protecting your work from scraping, other AI tools, and minimizing risks to your business when using AI and service-providers.
Presenters: Nicole O’Hara and Tom Vincent
Nicole O’Hara is an intellectual property and contracts attorney at Pierson Ferdinand LLP. Before law school, she earned a B.S. in Biochemistry from Rutgers University in New Brunswick and worked in HR for a short time. Upon graduating from Rutgers Law School in Camden, Nicole got her start in IP evaluating patentability at UMDNJ’s Office of Technology Transfer – searching patent databases, drafting and prosecuting applications, and analyzing patentability and marketability, before working at Saul Ewing and Archer Greiner and a few other firms in NJ and PA. Now, Nicole helps clients create business deals, revenue streams, and entire enterprises from the strong foundation afforded by their intellectual property. Her clients are innovators and entrepreneurs, and her job is translating their ideas into legally protected, commercially viable assets—building IP portfolios, negotiating transactions, facilitating the safe and legal use of software, technology, and AI, and advising on IP protection, technology, privacy, and cybersecurity.
Tom Vincent is a Partner at Pierson Ferdinand LLP, who works with clients to transform cybersecurity and privacy from technical issues to questions of identity, autonomy, and trust. Drawing on over twenty years in banking and regulatory leadership, Tom works to bridge the gap between the complex systems that move information and the human lives they impact and are designed to protect. Previously, Tom held senior executive roles as a Chief Compliance Officer, BSA/AML Compliance Officer, HIPAA Compliance Officer, and Corporate Secretary, leading enterprise-wide governance, privacy, and anti-money laundering programs across banking, investment advisory, and broker-dealer operations – earning a reputation for transforming compliance into a strategic advantage. Today, Tom Counsels financial institutions, technology startups, and healthcare organizations on cybersecurity, data privacy, and corporate governance. A Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Certified Regulatory Compliance Manager (CRCM), and Certified Information Privacy Professional/United States (CIPP/US), he helps organizations move from rule-following to responsibility-taking while preserving their corporate identity.
