Kathleen Porter is an intellectual property and technology lawyer in the firm's Business Transactions Group and former chair of the firm’s Intellectual Property + Technology Group. Her practice straddles the areas of intellectual property, business transactions, trade regulation, and Internet law and includes import/export control issues, such as compliance and enforcement, competition, privacy, and data security.
Her clients include precision manufacturing, life science, energy, consumer products, software, Internet and e-commerce, and other technology-driven businesses.
Business Transactions
Kathy has extensive experience in structuring and negotiating sophisticated domestic and cross-border commercial transactions, including license, OEM, distribution, manufacturing, and development agreements; acquisitions; supply, distribution outsourcing, and partnering arrangements; strategic alliances; business opportunities; and joint ventures.
Intellectual Property and Technology
Kathy counsels clients on the development, protection, and commercialization of intellectual property and technology. In particular, she has significant experience with e-commerce and Internet law issues, specifically online contracting, including click-thru and browse-wrap agreements, mobile applications, social media, online advertising, promotions, blogs, testimonials and sweepstakes, terms of use, and electronic signatures; and with online and Internet-related agreements, including website development and hosting agreements and content and other licensing arrangements.
Trade Regulation/Competition
Kathy advises clients on competition and regulatory issues, including price restraints and discrimination, volume discounts, MAP and other pricing programs, territorial and exclusive licensing restrictions, joint buying programs and other trade association or group activities, consumer protection, promotions, and advertising. She also counsels clients on competition law compliance, including the preparation of competition law premerger filings, and coordinates the preparation of foreign competition law filings.
International
In addition to the cross-border transactional representation of domestic and international clients, Kathy regularly advises foreign companies on their entry into the U.S. market, including corporate issues such as entity selection, structuring commercial agreements and marketing and sales issues, intellectual property protection, and day-to-day legal advice.
Data Security/Privacy
Kathy counsels businesses on the development and implementation of data security and privacy practices to comply with the patchwork of laws and rules applicable to the collection, use, safeguarding, sharing, and transfer of protected or personal data. She regularly structures arrangements with promoters, marketers, website exchanges, and other third parties for the purchase, sale, sharing, and safeguarding of personal data.
More Legal and Business Bylines From Kathleen M. Porter
- Unidentified Hacker Breaches Florida City’s Water Treatment System - (Posted On Thursday, February 11, 2021)
- Twitter fined $546,000 in December 2020 by European Data Protection Authority for 2019 Breach Notification Violations - (Posted On Tuesday, January 05, 2021)
- COVID-19: Governor Baker Issues Order Closing All “Non-Essential” Businesses Until April 7, 2020 - (Posted On Wednesday, March 25, 2020)
- COVID-19: New York and Connecticut among states ordering non-essential businesses closed - (Posted On Wednesday, March 25, 2020)
- The Coronavirus (COVID-19) and Material Adverse Effect Clause - (Posted On Monday, March 23, 2020)
- Planning for Business Delays and Disruptions Due to Coronavirus (COVID-19) - (Posted On Wednesday, March 04, 2020)
- U.S. Supreme Court Declines to Hear Case on Whether Commercial Websites and Mobile Apps Subject to Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (the “ADA”) - (Posted On Thursday, October 10, 2019)