Print PDF Branding, Trademarks, and False Advertising
For years, our firm’s intellectual property lawyers have diligently protected and enforced our clients’ trademarks and helped our clients build and maintain strong brands. We offer clients cost-effective and forward-looking strategies for the trademark and branding process, whether the matter involves a multi-jurisdictional roll-out for a multi-national corporation or the protection of a new mark for a start-up enterprise.
Our attorneys do not simply provide rote registration services. Instead, we work with our clients to articulate their intellectual property goals and to develop approaches that ensure that each intellectual property asset is protected in a way that serves those broad goals. We also educate our clients on the risks of their intellectual property asset decisions and suggest procedures or alternatives to minimize those risks.
Our comprehensive trademark services include, for example, counseling, clearing, and investigating marks and names, registration, licensing, audits, co-branding and sponsorships, naming rights, confidentiality, piracy and counterfeiting, trade dress, deceptive trade practices, customs registration, litigation, and UDRP arbitrations. Our attorneys have extensive commercial experience, which we draw upon to counsel clients in audits, acquisitions, sales, and securitization transactions. Importantly, our intellectual property lawyers understand tax, corporate, litigation, employment, and franchise implications and are aware of the many “hidden” intellectual property issues that may arise in modern business scenarios.
We handle thousands of marks and branding situations world-wide and have developed a global network of foreign counsel to help our clients navigate the nuances of other countries’ intellectual property laws. We have selected these foreign counsel to provide the most effective, cost-efficient services, particularly in strategic markets. In some cases, we have worked with the same firm or counsel for decades and can offer our clients our negotiated vendor discounts.
Advertising/False Advertising
Our advertising lawyers provide a broad spectrum of advertising services to our clients. We help to police the content of competitors' ads, to craft promotional and marketing materials that meet our clients' goals within the boundaries of the law, and to facilitate the relationship between our clients and their advertising or public relations agencies.
False advertising claims are governed by a number of laws, including the Lanham Act, which is the federal trademark statute, as well as federal regulations and unfair competition, consumer protection, and copyright laws. Our attorneys have broad-based experience in the welter of statutes and other authorities that may affect false advertising claims. We often are asked to evaluate our clients' proposed advertising materials for compliance with the law, to evaluate comparative advertising, and to assess the adequacy of the substantiation for comparative ads. We regularly work with our clients' advertising agencies to ensure that brands are used, and promotional materials are created, in a manner that strengthens trademark value.
