Intellectual Property – Van Lier Law

Intellectual Property Legal Services

Strategic IP Counsel for the AI-Transformed Economy

Intellectual Property Law Is Changing — Faster Than Most People Realize

Generative AI has upended foundational assumptions about authorship, ownership, and infringement — and the legal frameworks governing intellectual property are still catching up.

Copyright law has always been the backbone of the creative industry — protecting the works that performers, writers, directors, and artists create and generate revenue from. But AI has introduced genuinely novel questions that courts, the Copyright Office, and Congress are actively wrestling with: Can AI-generated works be copyrighted? Does training an AI model on protected content constitute infringement? Who owns a work created with substantial AI assistance? These aren’t hypothetical questions — they’re live disputes affecting real clients right now.

Van Lier Law advises creative professionals and businesses on intellectual property strategy in this rapidly evolving environment. We combine deep knowledge of copyright and trademark doctrine with an understanding of how AI systems work and how they interact with existing legal frameworks — grounding our advice in both the law as it stands today and the trajectory of where it’s heading.

Our clients include individual creators protecting their work, businesses navigating AI-related IP risk, and organizations seeking strategic guidance on building IP portfolios and licensing programs that account for the realities of synthetic media and generative AI.

Intellectual Property Services

We provide strategic counsel on copyright, trademark, and related IP issues for creators and businesses operating in the AI era.

Copyright Counseling

We advise on copyright ownership, registration, licensing, and enforcement — with particular focus on the unsettled questions AI has introduced. This includes guidance on AI-assisted works and current Copyright Office policy, analysis of fair use and transformative use in the context of AI training and output, and strategic advice on protecting creative works in a landscape where replication at scale has become technically trivial.

AI & Training Data Issues

Whether using copyrighted works to train AI models constitutes infringement is at the center of some of the most significant litigation in the country right now. We advise clients on both sides of this issue — creators concerned about unauthorized use of their work, and businesses seeking to understand their exposure and structure their AI practices responsibly before those questions are definitively resolved.

Trademark & Brand Protection

In an environment where AI can generate confusingly similar branding, names, and visual identities at scale, trademark protection matters more than ever. We advise on clearance, registration, and enforcement — and help clients understand how their existing brand assets may be implicated by AI-generated content that trades on their established identity and goodwill.

IP Licensing & Transactions

Intellectual property is only as valuable as your ability to monetize and protect it. We draft and negotiate licensing agreements, IP transfer documents, and content deals that account for the full scope of rights involved — including AI-related provisions that are increasingly becoming standard asks across creative industry transactions.

Why IP in the AI Era Requires Specialized Counsel

The standard IP questions — who owns it, who can use it, what does infringement look like — have become significantly more complicated in the age of AI. Training data disputes, AI-generated output ownership questions, and the interplay between rights of publicity and copyright are all areas where the law is actively developing. Working with counsel who understands both the legal doctrine and the technology means your advice accounts for where this is actually going, not just where it has been.