Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Proper Counsel PLLC ("Proper Counsel," "we," "us," or "our") is a New York professional limited liability company and law firm. We operate this website and the following related sites and brands:

propercounsel.co, Proper Counsel

properip.co, Proper IP, a brand of Proper Counsel PLLC

Proper IP is a trade name of Proper Counsel PLLC. It is not a separate company, and it is not a non-lawyer service. When you engage Proper IP, you are engaging a law firm.

This Privacy Policy explains how we handle personal information collected through these sites (together, the "Sites").

2. This policy and our professional obligations are not the same thing

This Privacy Policy governs personal information we collect through the Sites.

Separately, and more protectively, information you give us in the course of seeking or receiving legal services is governed by our professional duty of confidentiality under Rule 1.6 of the New York Rules of Professional Conduct, and may be protected by the attorney-client privilege and the work-product doctrine. Those obligations are broader and stricter than any privacy policy, and nothing in this policy limits them.

Where this policy and our professional obligations conflict, our professional obligations control.

3. Information we collect

Information you give us directly.

Contact and inquiry information, name, email address, phone number, company, role, and anything you choose to tell us when you contact us, book a call, or subscribe.

Trademark intake information, the mark you want to protect, your description of your goods or services, logo files, website, use status and dates of first use, the legal name and entity type of the mark owner, state of formation, domicile and billing address, related entities, key individuals, any third parties you identify as using or disputing a similar mark, and the name and title of your authorized signer.

Billing information, name on card, billing email, and billing address. Card details are collected and processed directly by our payment processor; we do not receive or store full payment card numbers.

Engagement and matter information, anything you provide once we represent you.

Information collected automatically. IP address, browser and device type, pages viewed, referring URL, and approximate location, via server logs and analytics. See Section 8.

Information from third parties and public records. In the course of clearance and filing work we obtain information from public sources, including the USPTO's trademark databases, state corporate registries, domain registries, and general web sources.

4. Please read this before you send us anything confidential

Submitting an intake form, emailing us, or paying a fee does not create an attorney-client relationship. That relationship is created only by a written engagement letter signed by both of us.

Before an engagement letter is signed, you are a prospective client. Under Rule 1.18 of the New York Rules of Professional Conduct, we owe prospective clients a duty of confidentiality with respect to information learned in the consultation, but that duty is narrower than the one we owe clients, and we may already represent, or later represent, someone with interests adverse to yours.

Practical guidance: send us only what the intake form asks for. Do not send us confidential business information, trade secrets, or details of a dispute until we have confirmed we can represent you and an engagement letter is in place. Information you volunteer before then may not be protected, and in some circumstances may prevent us from representing you at all.

5. How we use information

To evaluate a request for services, including running a conflicts check before we accept a matter.

To prepare and deliver legal services, clearance searches, opinions, USPTO applications, office-action responses, and related work.

To prepare engagement letters and open matters.

To process payments and manage billing.

To communicate with you about your matter, your inquiry, or your filing.

To operate, secure, and improve the Sites.

To comply with legal, regulatory, and professional obligations, including recordkeeping requirements applicable to New York lawyers.

We do not use your information for targeted advertising, and we do not train third-party AI models on your confidential information.

6. Your trademark filing becomes a public record

This deserves its own section, because it surprises people.

A U.S. trademark application is a public record. When we file on your behalf, the USPTO publishes the application and its contents in publicly searchable databases. The owner's name, the owner's domicile and mailing address, the owner's email address, the mark, the goods and services, dates of first use, specimens, and the signature block are all publicly visible and are indexed by search engines and by commercial data brokers who scrape USPTO records.

You should expect solicitation mail and email, some of it deceptive, after filing. Certain address information can in limited circumstances be shielded from public view under USPTO rules. If this matters to you, raise it with us before we file, and we will discuss the options and their limits.

We cannot retract information once it has been filed with the USPTO.

7. How we disclose information

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.

We disclose information only as follows:

Service providers. Vendors who process information on our behalf under contract and only on our instructions, including payment processing (Stripe), email and productivity (Google Workspace), document storage (Dropbox), website hosting and analytics (Lovable and Cloudflare), e-signature (BoldSign), automation and AI-assisted research tooling (Anthropic). See Section 9 regarding AI tooling.

The USPTO and other government authorities, as necessary to prosecute your matter. See Section 6.

Co-counsel, local counsel, or foreign associates, where your matter requires it and you have authorized it.

Where required by law, including in response to a subpoena, court order, or lawful demand, subject to our obligation to assert the attorney-client privilege and any other applicable protection on your behalf where grounds exist to do so.

In connection with a sale or reorganization of the practice, subject to the professional rules governing client files and client consent.

8. Cookies and analytics

The Sites use cookies and similar technologies that are strictly necessary to operate the Sites, and analytics cookies to understand aggregate usage. We do not use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.

You can control cookies through your browser. Blocking strictly necessary cookies may prevent parts of the Sites from working. [If a consent banner is deployed, describe it here.]

9. AI-assisted tooling

We use software, including AI-assisted tooling, to support research, drafting, search, and triage. Three commitments govern that use:

A licensed attorney reviews all substantive work product. No filing, opinion, or advice is delivered to you on the strength of an automated output alone.

We do not permit third-party providers to use your confidential information to train their models.

Our professional obligations of confidentiality and competence apply to our use of these tools exactly as they apply to everything else we do.

10. Retention

We retain personal information for as long as needed for the purposes described above and to meet our legal and professional obligations. Client files and related records are retained in accordance with our file-retention practices and applicable New York requirements, which in certain cases require retention for at least seven years. Inquiry and prospective-client information that does not become a matter is retained only as long as necessary to run conflicts checks and meet our recordkeeping obligations.

11. Security

We maintain administrative, technical, and physical safeguards appropriate to the sensitivity of the information we hold, including access controls, encryption in transit, and vendor diligence. No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. Email is not a secure channel; tell us if you need a more secure method and we will arrange one.

12. Your choices

You may ask us to correct information we hold about you, unsubscribe from marketing email at any time using the link in the message, or ask us to delete inquiry information that has not become a matter. Requests to delete information contained in a client file, or in records we are required to keep, may be limited by our professional and legal obligations.

To make a request: martin@propercounsel.co.

13. Notice to California residents

This section applies to California residents and is provided under the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the CPRA.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. We have not done so in the preceding twelve months.

Categories of personal information we have collected in the preceding twelve months: identifiers (name, email, postal address, IP address); customer records (billing information, signer name and title); commercial information (services purchased); internet activity (site usage); geolocation (approximate, from IP); professional or employment information (title, role, company); and inferences drawn from the foregoing, if any. We collect these from you directly, from your device, and from public records.

Purposes: as described in Section 5.

Categories disclosed for a business purpose in the preceding twelve months: identifiers, customer records, and commercial information, to the categories of service providers described in Section 7.

Sensitive personal information: we do not collect sensitive personal information for the purpose of inferring characteristics, and we use any such information only as permitted without an obligation to offer a right to limit.

Your rights. Subject to verification and to the exceptions below, California residents may request to know the categories and specific pieces of personal information we have collected, request correction of inaccurate information, request deletion, and opt out of sale or sharing (not applicable, we do neither). We will not discriminate against you for exercising these rights.

How to exercise. Email martin@propercounsel.co with the subject line "California Privacy Request." We will verify your identity by matching the information in your request against information we already hold. You may use an authorized agent with written authorization.

Important exceptions. Information subject to the attorney-client privilege or the work-product doctrine, and information we are required to retain under professional or legal obligations, is exempt from deletion and access requests. Where an exception applies, we will tell you which one.

14. Children

The Sites are directed to businesses and professionals and are not intended for anyone under 18. We do not knowingly collect information from children.

15. Changes

We may update this policy. We will post the revised version here and update the "Last updated" date. Material changes will be flagged conspicuously.

16. Contact

martin@propercounsel.co

martin@properip.co