Gearhart Law, LLC

Focus and practice areas

Gearhart Law works across two connected fields: intellectual property and business law. On the IP side the firm handles patents, trademarks and copyrights. On the business side it takes commercial law, commercial litigation and commercial transactions. For a founder, that pairing is practical, because a new product usually needs both a patent filing and the contracts that sit around it.

The clients the firm describes are inventors, entrepreneurs and businesses. Its office in Summit, New Jersey sits inside a busy corridor of research companies and early-stage ventures. The firm says it serves clients across the country, which matches the kind of work IP law involves.

Why the reach extends nationwide

Patents, trademarks and copyrights run on federal law. A patent granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office carries the same weight in California as it does in New Jersey. Gearhart Law makes this point directly and says its IP work is effective in all 50 states.

This is a genuine feature of IP practice, and it explains how a firm rooted in one town can represent inventors far from it. Registration and prosecution happen through federal offices, so distance means less here than in many other areas of law. In my opinion, that federal footing is the first thing an out-of-state inventor should understand before choosing counsel.

The range of patent work

Patent practice at the firm covers several technical fields. The site names pharmaceuticals, medical devices, life sciences, software, chemicals, food products and design. That spread points to attorneys who can read across different kinds of invention, which patent drafting asks for.

Patent matters follow a defined path. An application goes to the USPTO, an examiner reviews it, and the applicant replies to objections through written responses called office actions. The cycle can run for years before a patent issues, and it often involves claims that get narrowed and rewritten along the way. A firm that files across many fields has usually worked that process from several directions.

Design patents, which the firm also names, cover how a product looks rather than how it works. They follow their own track at the USPTO and protect the visual form of an object. Handling both utility and design work lets a firm advise an inventor on which kind of protection fits a given product.

Trademarks, copyrights and enforcement

Trademark work protects the names and marks a business trades under. Gearhart Law handles selection, registration and maintenance, and it enforces marks against infringement. Selection is the early stage where the firm checks a proposed name against existing marks for conflicts. Registration moves the mark through the USPTO. Maintenance keeps a registered mark alive through the renewal filings the office requires at set intervals. Enforcement is the step where the firm acts when another party uses a mark that clashes with a client's. Copyright services sit alongside this work and cover original creative and written material.

Transactions, litigation and the business side

Much IP work is transactional. Gearhart Law drafts the agreements that move rights between parties, and the site lists non-disclosure agreements, licensing agreements, and the sale or acquisition of IP rights. A non-disclosure agreement lets a small company share an idea in a meeting while keeping legal control of it. A licensing agreement lets a patent holder earn money from an invention without selling it outright.

When protection turns into a dispute, the firm represents clients in IP litigation. It also names commercial law, commercial litigation and commercial transactions on the business side. For a young company, these are the matters that surface as it grows: forming entities, writing contracts, and handling disputes with vendors or partners.

Keeping transactional and courtroom work in one firm means the lawyers who drafted an agreement can be the ones who argue over it later. As a reviewer, I see that continuity as a practical convenience for a client who wants one team across the life of a matter. An inventor who patents a device often needs a company to sell it, and Gearhart Law can protect the idea and then help build the business around it.

How the team is built

The site lists eight people. Richard Gearhart is the founding partner. With him are partners David Postolski, James Klobucar and Jim Francis, patent attorneys T. Benjamin Schroeder and Joe Runge, associate Steven Frydman, and Elizabeth Gearhart as chief marketing officer.

Two of the named attorneys hold advanced science degrees. Ben Schroeder has a Ph.D. and Joe Runge holds a JD with an MS. Science training is common among patent attorneys, since a patent lawyer often has to understand an invention as well as the inventor does. That mix of law and science lines up with the technical patent fields the firm lists.

Gearhart Law says its principals have been protecting clients for almost three decades and have helped launch more than a thousand companies. The site does not state a founding year. What it gives instead is a described track record and a named team, both of which a prospective client can weigh against the individual attorney bios.

The founder's background

Richard Gearhart is the founding partner, and his own training shows the mix that patent work asks for. He earned a Bachelor of Arts from Knox College and a Juris Doctor from Case Western Reserve University School of Law, which he finished in 1988. He also studied at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. That international grounding lines up with the cross-border patent prosecution the firm handles.

Before he started the firm, Gearhart worked as Senior Managing Counsel at Dow Corning Corporation and as an attorney at Jones Day. Dow Corning is a materials and chemicals company, so its in-house counsel deals with product patents as a daily matter. Jones Day is a large firm with a broad corporate practice. Gearhart therefore saw IP law from inside a company and from inside a firm before opening his own. His practice today covers patent application drafting, domestic and international patent prosecution, due diligence, opinion work, and support for IP litigation.

What two of the attorneys focus on

The record gives a fuller picture of two partners. David Postolski received a Bachelor of Arts from New York University in 1995 and then attended Nova Southeastern University's Shepard Broad Law Center. At the firm his work centers on intellectual property, and he prepares applications for patents and trademarks alongside copyright and licensing work. James Klobucar earned a Bachelor of Arts from Cornell College in 2008 and a Juris Doctor from the University of New Hampshire School of Law in 2011. He works as a patent application lawyer, and his practice reaches patent and trademark applications as well as intellectual property and licensing. Both attorneys concentrate on the filing side of IP, which is where much of a young company's early legal work sits.

Finding the office

Gearhart Law keeps its office at 41 River Road in Summit, and the phone number listed is 908.273.0700. Summit sits in northern New Jersey, close to New York and to the chemical and life sciences companies that operate across the region. For an inventor whose product falls into one of the technical fields the firm names, a single office in that part of the state is easy to reach and close to the industries that sit behind the firm's patent work.