Admiralty & Maritime

Our extensive practice involves all areas of admiralty and maritime law. We represent banks, lending institutions and finance companies in connection with ship and yacht financing, preferred ship mortgages, arrest and foreclosure disputes, lien priority disputes and deficiency actions. Our experienced team of lawyers and paralegals can obtain vessel arrests and maritime attachments expeditiously. We also litigate and arbitrate a broad range of admiralty and maritime claims including charter party disputes, cargo claims, hull and machinery claims, maritime personal injury and marine product liability claims. Our lawyers handle ocean marine and inland marine insurance claims, subrogation claims and coverage disputes. Our Admiralty & Maritime Group is chaired by Greg Ligelis, a proctor in admiralty and an adjunct professor of admiralty and marine insurance law at the University of Connecticut School of Law. Attorneys in our Admiralty & Maritime Group are members of the following: American Bar Association, Tort and Insurance Section Property Law Committee American Boat Builders & Repairers Association Connecticut Maritime Association Connecticut World Trade Association Defense Research Institute International Bar Association, Committee on Maritime Law and Transport Maritime Lawyers Association and their Marine Finance Recreational Boating Committee National Marine Banking Association, Approved Admiralty Counsel

Bankruptcy and Business Workout

The various aspects of insolvency practice present a unique mixture of legal, business, financial and human relations problems. Robinson & Cole has worked extensively on these problems for regional, national and international clients including individual lenders, syndicated lending groups, institutional investors, acquirers of assets from financially distressed companies, real estate and equipment lessors and other parties in need of specialized debtor-creditor relations counsel. We provide creditor position analysis, loan structure and restructure analysis, loan administration and workout advice, prebankruptcy counseling and bankruptcy court representation together with related litigation and alternative dispute resolution. Our insolvency and creditors' rights practice includes lead lender, secured creditor and major vendor representation; insolvency acquisition advice and representation; defense against bankruptcy preference, fraudulent transfer, subordination and other avoidance claims; foreclosures; the development and negotiation of out-of-court and Chapter 11 workouts, restructure and reorganization plans; lender liability litigation; and representation on matters arising out of loan participations, inter-creditor agreements, lender conduct, executory contracts, license and franchise agreements, distributorship agreements and commitment letters.

Real Estate

The complex practices and laws governing how we deal with real property ownership, development, use and control change constantly as demographics shift, economies expand and contract, and national priorities change. Our challenge is to reconcile our clients' goals with the cold, hard realities of real estate law. Our real estate attorneys provide lenders with quick regulatory audits of properties owned or mortgaged as security and general real estate counseling in connection with land development, land use permitting, real estate finance, conveyancing, workouts and foreclosures. We represent a wide array of clients from institutions, public and private lenders, special trade groups, state agencies, bonding authorities and schools to commercial and residential developers, healthcare institutions, hotel chains, manufacturers and syndicators. In today's market, much of our real estate work involves problem commercial, common interest and residential real estate loans.

Intellectual Property and Technology Group

The Intellectual Property and Technology Group is an interdisciplinary team of lawyers who provide advice on the acquisition, use and exploitation of technology and are committed to protecting the intellectual property rights of our clients. The group, which includes lawyers with engineering backgrounds, combines a high degree of expertise and depth of experience with enthusiasm for this important legal area. We provide advice regarding the protection of trade secrets, copyrights and trademarks. This includes counseling clients about trade secret protection programs, evaluation and registration of trademarks and servicemarks, and the protection and enforcement of copyrights. We also have extensive experience in the licensing of trade secrets, know-how, copyrights, trademarks and patents and in the enforcement of technology license rights. A significant part of our work involves international licensing and distribution arrangements. These arrangements are increasingly affected by developments in the federal income tax law. Our computer law experience includes representation of software developers, vendors of commercial and consumer software, and commercial software and hardware users. We have extensive experience advising clients with respect to copyright and trademark protection, licensing and distribution agreements, service bureau contracts, development agreements and maintenance and service agreements. Clients for whom we have provided computer law advice as vendors and users include major banks, insurance companies and healthcare providers. We've also provided advice to manufacturing companies, universities, software developers and libraries and other municipal users. Litigation specialists are an integral component of the Intellectual Property and Technology Group. With broad substantive experience in trade secret, unfair trade practice and intellectual property issues, our litigation lawyers are often called upon to work closely with business lawyers to develop prelitigation and litigation strategies for the protection of intellectual property rights. In the course of protecting the technology and proprietary information of our clients, our litigation lawyers often serve in the capacity of coordinating and directing a nationwide litigation strategy.