Lee Palmateer Law Office

Focus and practice areas

Intellectual property is the whole of the work here. The firm handles patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets, and it adds technology transfer and commercialization for clients moving an idea toward market. Trademarks protect brand names and logos. A copyright covers creative and written work once it is fixed in a tangible form, and a trade secret guards confidential business information that gives a company an edge. Patent work covers applications and prosecution before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the federal body that examines and grants patents.

The firm also takes IP litigation and enforcement. That matters because the same lawyers who file for a right can also defend it when someone challenges or copies it. In my opinion, a client who wants one team for both the registration and any later court fight gains something from keeping the two stages together.

The mix here is tight for a two-attorney firm. Every area named connects to one question: how a client secures a piece of intellectual property and keeps it. That focus tends to reward clients whose whole concern is a patent, a mark, or a trade secret.

How the team is built

Two attorneys carry the work, and both reached law through engineering. Lee Palmateer started the firm in November 2009. He has an engineering background, more than 25 years of legal experience, and about 12 of those years spent on intellectual property. He is an admitted patent attorney, which means he prepares and files applications directly with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Palmateer's path to the firm ran through a decade at an upstate New York firm dedicated to IP, work he did before starting his own in 2009. As a reviewer, I take that decade as a sign he knew the field's daily procedures well before he opened the doors. Both attorneys work on the patent side, so the firm has two people able to draft and prosecute applications with the patent office.

The second attorney, Lawrence D. Cutter, holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering. He worked as patent counsel to IBM and General Electric, and he has secured hundreds of patents across a range of technologies. He has taught patent and trade secret law at Albany Law School and electrical engineering and computer science at Union College. A teaching record like that tends to help when technical claims have to be explained to a judge or a jury.

Who the firm represents

The client list includes individual entrepreneurs, small and large corporations, universities, and government agencies. That breadth suggests the firm is comfortable with both a solo inventor's first filing and a larger corporate portfolio. A prospective client can reasonably ask how a matter their size would be staffed, since the same two names appear across the work.

Universities and government agencies among the clients connect to technology transfer, the work of moving research into licensed or commercial use. The firm names technology transfer and commercialization among its services, which aligns with what a research institution needs when it patents and licenses an invention. That gives the client roster an internal logic worth noting.

The firm also acts as local counsel and co-counsel for other law firms that need IP help in New York. That role places it beside out-of-state litigators who require someone admitted in the state and familiar with its courts. As co-counsel, the firm can handle the IP-specific parts of a case while the lead firm manages the rest.

How an IP matter tends to proceed

A patent application starts at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, where an examiner reviews the claims and often issues rejections that the attorney answers over several rounds. Many inventors begin with a provisional application to set an early priority date, then file a full application within a year. The engineering training both attorneys hold is the grounding this drafting work usually calls for.

Trademark registration runs its own path through the same office. An applicant files for a mark in specific classes of goods or services, an examiner reviews it, and the mark is published for opposition before it registers. Copyright protection attaches when a work is fixed in a tangible form, and a formal registration is what lets an owner sue for infringement in federal court.

Enforcement is a separate track. When a party believes a patent, trademark, or copyright has been infringed, the dispute can move to federal court, since federal law governs most intellectual property claims. An infringement suit usually moves through discovery and expert reports, and a patent case adds a hearing where the court decides what the claims mean. Trade secret matters often turn on contracts and internal safeguards, because a trade secret has no public registration to rely on. A firm that both files these rights and litigates them can stay with a client when a filing later becomes a dispute.

Where the firm works

The firm is based in Albany and reaches across the Capital Region and the Mid-Hudson Valley. Named cities include Schenectady, Troy, Saratoga Springs, Glens Falls, Poughkeepsie, Kingston, and Newburgh. Beyond New York, it takes work nationwide in its local counsel capacity.