New Resource for Gourmet Food & Beverage Businesses

COOPERSTOWN, NY (03/05/2012)(readMedia)-- In the food and beverage business, it pays to be unique. Having a distinctive brand and product are critical to success in the fast growing but highly competitive global market for gourmet foods. Protecting know-how, brand, and relationships can be the difference between flourishing and failing.

Cooperstown, New York is now home to its first intellectual property law firm serving the area's growing gourmet and natural food and beer and wine making industries. "These are exciting times. Increasingly, food producers are developing the rich agricultural bounty of the Catskill and Adirondak regions, supplying a multitude of NY-metro area consumers who crave fresh, locally grown food and drink," said Charles Knull of the newly formed Knull Group of Cooperstown. "To take just one example, the success of Greek yogurt brands produced in central New York state have had a dramatic effect on the resurgence of dairy farming in our area."

Devin Morgan of the Group added, "The combination of abundant agricultural resources and the cosmopolitan influences of cities, colleges, and tourism mean that there are great restaurants, breweries, wineries, and gourmet food makers all around the area with their products reaching down into the New York metro area."

The group will maintain offices in Cooperstown and in New York City. Its client base includes not only food and beverage makers and importers, but also technology and software companies.

Morgan has an engineering degree from Dartmouth College and JD and Master of Intellectual Property degrees from Franklin Pierce Law Center (now the University of New Hampshire School of Law). He practiced in large law firms in Washington, DC, focusing on patent prosecution, IP analysis, and litigation for both technology startups and Fortune 500 companies. He later formed my own consulting business to help companies with IP analysis, strategy, and process and left consulting to be in-house counsel for Maxtor Corporation and Seagate Technology before coming to Cooperstown in 2008.

Knull has extensive experience in trademark, trade secret, and copyright litigation and coordination of complicated litigation with related international disputes. He has extensive experience with the intellectual property and other legal needs of domestic and foreign brewers and winemakers and the food industry. He counsels clients regarding trademark and copyright licenses, computer contracts and entertainment and publishing contracts. Mr. Knull earned his J.D. from Washington College of Law, American University, Washington, D.C. in 1974. He obtained his B.A. from Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, in 1969. He is admitted to practice at the New York & District of Columbia Bars and many federal courts. Mr. Knull was with law firms in New York City for over 20 years. Prior to starting trademark and copyright law practice in 1993, he served as editor-in-charge of the Intellectual Property publications at Matthew Bender & Co. (now Lexis). Before that he was Legislative Assistant to Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder of Colorado and a Subcommittee Counsel in the U.S. House of Representatives.