Our Credentials

Core Competencies

At Altera, we focus on those business and legal tasks that affect your ability to develop, control, preserve, and capitalize on your intellectual property.

To do that, we maintain the ability to manage your interests in areas as diverse as employment contracts and patent applications. We can manage the formation of your company to the litigation of your disputes, and lots in between. These practice areas may seem diverse, but to us they are all critical components of your comprehensive business strategy within which your intellectual property is managed.

It’s important to note that we consider your intellectual property management as an integral, but subservient, part of your business strategy. It is not an end in itself. A patent or trademark shouldn’t be created to protect an invention or brand. They are supposed to protect a business opportunity. And that’s a point too often lost on too many law firms. It’s about the business…

If you read about our services, you’ll see that we offer similar sounding services to every other IP law firm in town. And if you look over our staff, you’ll see that we field a team much like any other IP law firm in town. But if you’re careful, you’ll spot the fact that we don’t hire junior attorneys, that our patent prosecutors have an average of more than 15 years in their field, and that we use PhD scientists and 30-year experienced business executives to bring an expertise to your business and IP strategy that is very much unlike the other law firms in town. Dig further and you’ll spot the fact that our first questions for a prospective client who wants a patent are not about the invention at all. They’re about the business. Our first response to a dispute is not ‘do you have a good case?’, but ‘is it strategically and economically worth the fight?’

In fact, we have the skills and aptitudes to do nearly anything you need done to use your intellectual property to further your business objectives. But our real point of difference is in our approach. Our approach that puts your business objectives and your business reality ahead of anything else.

In fact, if you spend an hour with us, you may not want to go back to your old law firm again...