Matt Braunel protects and vigorously enforces his clients’ intellectual property rights, including design and utility patents, trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets. For businesses and organizations of all sizes, he provides creative strategies that—due to their practical and highly targeted nature—are as efficient as they are effective.
Chair of the firm’s AI Task Force, Innovation Committee and co-chair of the AI Practice Group , Matt carefully steers clients through the copyright stress test that is generative AI. Much of his current counseling in the firm’s burgeoning Generative AI practice centers on risk avoidance via contract. Matt also wields innovative portfolio and copyright enforcement strategies to disrupt third parties using generative AI in an attempt to infringe without apparent detection.
Beyond his national counseling and litigation services, Matt has a brand protection practice that focuses on the flow of goods through international commerce. He works with the International Trade Commission and customs and border protection to combat piracy and seize counterfeit goods.
Matt is a registered patent attorney who has appeared before the International Trade Commission, the Patent and Trademark Office, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, and the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals and District Courts in over 20 states. Held in high regard by clients and peers, a client noted in Lexology Client Choice that, “Mr. Braunel is one of the top trademark practitioners not only in Missouri, but in the United States, and is a valuable asset to all corporate counsel.”
- American Bar Association
- Co-Chair, Intellectual Property Litigation Committee
- Member, Task Force on Law and Artificial Intelligence
- The Missouri Bar
- Co-Chair, Intellectual Property & Biotech Law Committee
- Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis
- Lawyer of the Year for Litigation – Patent in St. Louis, The Best Lawyers in America (by BL Rankings), 2022
- Best Lawyers in America (by BL Rankings), 2019-2026
- Lexology Client Choice Award Winner for Intellectual Property-Trademarks, 2013
- Up & Coming Lawyer, Missouri Lawyers Weekly, 2013
- Quoted, “AI Scores an Early Win Against Hollywood as Copyright War Escalates,” TheWrap, June 28, 2025
- Quoted, “Anthropic Copyright Ruling May Spur More AI Licensing Deals,” Law360, June 24, 2025
- Author, “How the Copyright Office is Drawing the Line between Human and Artificial Intelligence Authorship,” St. Louis Law Journal, May 9, 2025
- Quoted, “US confirms AI cannot be an author—but this is just the start,” World Intellectual Property Review, March 24, 2025
- Quoted, “Will the US Copyright Office’s AI stance create more problems than it solves?” World Intellectual Property Review, February 19, 2025
- “Inside the AI black box: What lawyers need to know about how tech companies build and deploy AI” presented at the Missouri Bar/Missouri Judicial Conference Annual Meeting, September 2025
- “When in Doubt, Tell the Truth—But What if AI Writes It? AI Challenges in Federal Litigation” presented at the Eastern District of Missouri Bench & Bar Seminar, June 2025
- “Decoding AI Output: A Technical Perspective on Risk for Legal Professionals” presented to The National Association of Railroad Trial Counsel, April 2025
- “All Things Leadership and AI Roundtable” at ABA TECHSHOW, Chicago, April 2025
- “Transforming Intellectual Property Workflows and Shaping IP Strategy” presented at ALM Legalweek, New York, March 2025
- “Ctrl+Alt+Disrupt: Higher Ed in the Age of Generative AI” presented at Thompson Coburn Higher Ed Practice Group CLE, February 2025
- “Ethical Considerations of Embracing & Using Generative AI: From How do I? To Should I?” presented at the Missouri Bar Annual Meeting, September 2024