The demand for intellectual property attorneys is rising as IP issues are spilling into nearly all business deals.
“In every business transaction that’s happening these days, even if it’s only a small portion of it, there’s trademarks to be assigned, there’s software licenses to be reviewed to maybe transfer, there’s data issues,” said Josh Hallenbeck, an attorney at the Rose Law Firm of Little Rock.
“There’s all those sorts of things happening in every single … business purchase.
“It’s much more important than it used to be several years ago,” said Hallenbeck, a patent attorney who recently left Mitchell Williams Selig Gates & Woodyard of Little Rock to join the Rose Law Firm in an of counsel role.
The Rose Law Firm realized the importance of having a full-service intellectual property practice and hired Hallenbeck, he said.
Having a full-service IP practice allows a firm to answer client questions on any IP topic that arises, “whether it be patent, software, trademark, copyright, whatever it is,” he said. “Even if it’s just a quick question of ‘Hey, I got this deal going on — is this a thing?’ And a lot of times it’s not, but sometimes it is, and I’m like, thank God you called me, because this really was going to matter.”
The Rose Law Firm, one of the largest law firms in the state with 53 attorneys, also has an office in Rogers.
Hallenbeck estimates there are about two dozen patent attorneys in Arkansas.
An aspiring patent attorney needs to have a science degree and then, after passing the bar exam, must pass a patent bar exam administered by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. Hallenbeck received a biology degree from John Brown University in Siloam Springs.
He said that he thinks the number of patent attorneys will grow with the expansion of the technology industry in the state.
But Hallenbeck handles more than patent issues.
The graduate of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville School of Law also works on trademark and copyright issues. “And the thing that I’ve seen an uptick in, and have already helped people with in the last few weeks, is software-related agreements,” he said.
Over the last five years, Hallenbeck said, he has noticed more clients getting “these 80-page … software contracts for some larger piece of software that’s now going to run 60% of their business.”
He said intellectual property attorneys are tapped to translate those contracts into plain English for their clients, or provide other services related to the contract.
Lately, there’s been more artificial intelligence addenda to the software contracts that Hallenbeck has seen from larger companies that have incorporated AI into their software platforms, he said.
“And honestly, the law hasn’t probably caught up to all of that yet,” he said.
“And so it’s we’re reviewing it, and we’re talking with people about it, but the law tends to move a little bit slower than the tech companies,” Hallenback said.
One area that could pose an IP problem for a company is in the hiring of a software developer to create software, he said. “There’s always tension there,” Hallenbeck said, over who owns the software, the company or the developer. So spelling out who owns what on the front end is ideal, he said, “and if you don’t, it gets messy.”
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