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Your Property Protected

Whether you are just getting your business started or a seasoned business owner, Francine’s 30 years of experience in business and intellectual property law will provide the expertise necessary to give you peace of mind by protecting your content, your brand, your business structure, and your estate.

31 Days to Estate Planning

Have you ever wished there was one location to find basic information about estate planning? One location where you could get some definitions for concepts e.g., what is a trust? What is a Trustee? What goes into an estate plan? Can you disinherit your kids? How to you protect your pets when you die? Well, I put together 31 Days of Estate Planning Blogs to get you started. I have provided a short post for each topic.

Estate Planning Lawyer

How prepared are you for your future and the future of your loved ones – truly prepared, a little prepared, or not so much? Believe it or not, most people are not. Many people believe they don’t really need to get their estate plan in order. Some feel as long as they have just a Will, they are protecting their assets and their family’s future. However, true protection goes further than a simple Will.

Never Miss a Newsletter

Find out the latest news in Estate Planning and Intellectual Property from your trusted legal counselor, Francine D. Ward!

Trademarks

Legal protection for distinctive signs (such as logos or names) used in commerce to identify and distinguish goods or services.

Estate Planning

The process of arranging and organizing one’s assets, properties, and affairs to ensure efficient management upon death or incapacity.

Copyrights

Legal protection granting exclusive rights to creators for their original works, preventing unauthorized use by others.

Contract Review

The area of law that governs legally enforceable agreements between parties, setting out their rights and obligations.

Publishing Law

The branch of law that deals with  the publishing industry, copyright, contracts, defamation, and intellectual property.

Meet Francine

Whether you are just getting your business started or a seasoned business owner, Francine’s 30 years of experience in business and intellectual property law will provide the expertise necessary to give you peace of mind by protecting your content, your brand, your business structure, and your estate.

Francine is Of Counsel at Monty White, LLP, a full service law firm in San Rafael, CA. She heads its Business and Intellectual Property Law Group, as well as managing its Palm Desert, CA office. Francine is a 1989 graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center and admitted to practice in California, New York, and the District of Columbia.

Francine D. Ward
Attorney-At-Law

 

Contract Mistakes

Contract Mistakes Contract Mistakes. No Written Agreement.Probably the number one contract mistake people make is not having written agreements with everyone they do business with. I am always amazed by the reasons they give. Yet, regardless of how confident they...

AI and Patents

AI and Patents. Understanding Patent Law in the Age of AI. Patents, along with Copyrights, Trademarks, Trade Secrets, and Rights of Publicity, are one of the five areas of practice that we call intellectual property law. It protects inventions, systems, methods,...

Effective Goal Setting

Setting Goals. It’s that time of year, time to plan for effective goal setting. A time when some of us start thinking about goals for the upcoming year. If you are like me, you’ve already started thinking about your 2024 goals. In fact, I have already started...

Indemnify AI Use

Beware of companies that say they will indemnify AI use, that they will pay ALL the legal costs incurred by customers using Generative AI services (like ChatGPT, CoPilot, or Bard). Why? Because there are so many variables at play. For example, covering customers with...
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