James Creekmore voted to the Virginia "Legal Elite" for Intellectual Property Law
James Creekmore has been honored again among Virginia's "Legal Elite" in the December 2009 issue of Virginia Business Magazine. Attorneys are selected through a vote of nearly 7,000 Virginia lawyers conducted by Virginia Business Magazine in conjunction with the Virginia Bar Association. James has been voted to this category each year since being profiled in the cover story in December 2003, below.
James Creekmore voted "Super Lawyer" for Intellectual Property Law
For the second year in a row, James Creekmore has been recognized by his peers as a Virginia Super Lawyer for 2009 in the field of Intellectual Property Law, as reported in Law & Politics magazine in July 2009. Virginia lawyers were asked to nominate the best attorneys from within a variety of practice categories, following which the background, experience and qualifications of each candidate nominated were evaluated for inclusion. The final selection of Virginia Super Lawyers represents the top 5% of all Virginia attorneys.
A tremendous amount of litigation in the field of gas law has centered around one issue: what costs may a gas producer (hereinafter "lessee") properly deduct when calculating the royalty payment of a gas owner (hereinafter "lessor") under an oil and gas lease. The answer to this question varies depending upon the language used by the parties in their particular lease's royalty provision and the particular court's interpretation of that language.
Not suprisingly, securities class action litigation is on the rise in the United States. Research from the Administrative Office of the United States Courts indicates that overall securities class action filings more than doubled from 2000 to 2001. A Stanford Law School report last year indicated that 2001 also saw a loss of more than $2 trillion in market capitalization by the companies sued in securities fraud class actions during that year, representing a 150 percent increase from the market capitalization loss for the compaies sued during the prior year.
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Knowing which lawyers really are the best
can be confusing when there are so many
lists telling you who’s who.
Those ubiquitous “Best of” lawyers lists magazines are turning out like “Who’s Who” lists of old may have some marketing value.
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Big legal fees are especially scary to small business owners.
So Finch is leading Creekmore’s new "Small Business Plan," in which such enterprises can get legal help at a flat rate: an initial fee of $750 and $75 monthly after that.
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If small businesses are the true engines of our nation’s economic growth, perhaps The Creekmore Law Firm is onto something. The Blacksburg-based firm, with another office in Botetourt County, has just launched an unusual marketing strategy to target potential small business clients...
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Many concerns are the same as those confronting a brick and mortar business based solely on terra firma, but when building a Web-based company or establishing online commerce as a core component, there are specific legal issues to think about. That's according to attorneys in this region who deal with such matters...
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James Creekmore, 40, opened the Creekmore Law Firm in Daleville in February of 2006. . . . The worldwide demand for his specialty made Creekmore's move less risky and led him to open a second office last month with two attorneys in Blacksburg.
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It isn’t often that competing law firms get together to share credit for a good cause—while beating each other’s brains out for sport.
But that’s what happened on River’s Edge field in Roanoke in late July.
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Our clients are migrating more toward business models comprised significantly of Internet-based businesses, remote work forces and a national or even international presence.
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A Virtual IP Litigation Boutique? That’s the idea behind the XDL Group, which includes such prominent Virginia lawyers as Wyatt B. Durrette Jr. of DurretteBradshaw and Charles M. Allen of Goodman, Allen & Filletti of Richmond....
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A Virtual law firm. Let that sink in for a minute. No office. No jostling for parking spaces. Meetings in real time with colleagues and/or clients across the country over the internet...
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Law on the Internet: The next big step James Creekmore finally had all he wanted of big firm law and he has turned to the 'Net for relief in a new
Adventure in Law By Becky Hepler If there can be Internet banking, why not a virtual law firm? Ten years ago, James Creekmore, founder of The Creekmore Law Firm in Daleville, had a chance to see the potential of the Internet. One of his clients...
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“X” is for multi. “D” is for dimensional. “The multidimensional in XDL refers to the group’s diverse legal and technical backgrounds, different geographical locations, and the fact that IP litigation is like a multidimensional chess game in which various strategies and tactics are employed simultaneously to achieve an optimal outcome for the client.” “L” is for litigation...
Intellectual property law is complex and highly competitive, and Roanoke lawyer James Creekmore has been navigating its turbulent waters since he began working at the Woods Rogers law firm in 1996. With the Internet raising constant challenges, this area of law is evolving rapidly. From trademarks to copyrights and patents, Creekmore’s practice puts him in the middle of the whirl.
As chair of the firm’s intellectual practice group, he works with a team of a dozen lawyers that wrestles with all aspects of the field. For the past 18 months, trademark disputes have ballooned. “It’s a reflection of the fact that businesses are recognizing that their product and their brand names are what bring value to the business,” says Creekmore.
“They are taking much more care to protect their trade and brand names.” Opportunities for confusion caused by the Internet abound, sparking many disputes.
As chair of the firm’s intellectual practice group, he works with a team of a dozen lawyers that wrestles with all aspects of the field. For the past 18 months, trademark disputes have ballooned. “It’s a reflection of the fact that businesses are recognizing that their product and their brand names are what bring value to the business,” says Creekmore. “They are taking much more care to protect their trade and brand names.” Opportunities for confusion caused by the Internet abound, sparking many disputes.
One of the best things about doing intellectual property law, Creekmore says, is the facility it gives him with the foundations of business. As a litigator, he spends plenty of time in federal court, but he also focuses on business strategy, helping businesses plan ahead and grow. “How many of their marks and their brands need to be registered, protected, enforced? How can we make sure that their competition is not riding their coattails to success?” These are questions his staff considers, because as Creekmore notes “we bring royalty income to the table. A lot of your bigger companies recognize that, and they have added significant dollars to the bottom line. … We try to be very vigilant.”
The practice is equally divided between litigators and business people. The business counselors are active in registering and filings while litigators spend their time enforcing the paper. Much of the trademark litigation, Creekmore says, gets settled out of court through alternative dispute resolution. Of the 16 active cases his team was handling in late October, none were being pursued in court.
It’s all quite a bit of responsibility for a lawyer just 10 years out of law school. Creekmore, 35, has been practicing as a litigator for seven years. The Chesapeake native received his undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia, before going to law school at the College of William and Mary. Following graduation there in 1993, he clerked for a federal judge in North Carolina for two years before joining Woods Rogers.
Creekmore ex-pects to remain in the intellectual property field. “With the Internet continuing to expand, I don’t see any retreat from intellectual property,” he says. “Domain registration continues to boom, and that’s confusing for a lot of folks.” For instance, companies wrestle with when they can legally use part of another company’s name for fair use or for parody use. “You find that with Web site deals, third-party contractors are prevalent. They are incorporating trademark and copyright. We have seen a lot of clients with contractual disputes who find out they don’t own as much of their Web site as they thought they owned.”
Music is another big area, says Creekmore. The practice represents several songwriters and singers engaged in disputes about their rights to CDs. “The more technology advances,” predicts Creekmore, “the more opportunity there is for intellectual property practitioners.”
