Trademark
Survey
Experts
Consumer Research for Trademark Litigation
Independent trademark survey experts helping attorneys evaluate consumer perception, survey evidence, and litigation risk.
Keegan & Donato Consulting is a specialty consulting firm providing trademark survey experts for litigation. Common issues addressed include likelihood of confusion, secondary meaning, consumer perception, and other issues related to intellectual property and false advertising disputes.
These cases often benefit from consumer data showing how people understand a name, mark, product packaging, label, advertisement, or other marketing communication. Reliable survey evidence helps courts and legal teams move beyond argument and intuition when evaluating likelihood of confusion, secondary meaning, acquired distinctiveness, false advertising, and related Lanham Act claims.
Consumer Survey Research for Trademark Litigation
Keegan & Donato Consulting provides independent consumer survey research for trademark litigation, Lanham Act claims, false advertising disputes, and related intellectual property matters. Led by Mark Keegan and Tony Donato, we help attorneys develop, test, critique, and present survey evidence that is grounded in accepted research methods and tailored to the legal issues in dispute.
Our role is to measure consumer perception carefully, identify what the data can and cannot support, and help legal teams understand how survey evidence may affect case strategy, settlement posture, expert reports, rebuttal work, and testimony. The goal is not to make a case look stronger than it is, but to provide research that can be evaluated, challenged, explained, and defended.
Trademark Surveys Built Around the Legal Question
Keegan & Donato Consulting designs and critiques surveys involving:
- Likelihood of confusion
- Strength of the mark
- Secondary meaning
- Acquired distinctiveness
- Lanham Act claims
- False advertising claims
- Consumer perception and consumer understanding
- Packaging, labeling, and marketplace presentation
- Rebuttal of opposing survey evidence
As trademark survey experts, Mark Keegan and Tony Donato help legal teams connect survey design decisions to the legal question the survey is meant to address.
Mark Keegan
Testifying Trademark Survey Expert
Mark Keegan brings decades of litigation and survey experience to trademark and consumer perception matters. As a founding partner of Keegan & Donato Consulting and a testifying trademark survey expert, he has worked on complex cases involving Lanham Act claims, marketing, consumer behavior, trademark issues, advertising, and related disputes.
Mr. Keegan serves as the primary testifying expert for many matters involving consumer survey evidence. His experience includes designing, executing, critiquing, and testifying on consumer surveys used in litigation. He has been accepted as a consumer survey expert in federal and state cases and trials, and his work supports attorneys who need survey evidence that can withstand scrutiny from opposing experts, courts, and experienced litigation teams.
Mark’s background is especially valuable when a case requires more than technical survey execution. Trademark disputes often involve strategic questions: whether a survey should be conducted at all, which methodology is appropriate, how to define the relevant universe, whether marketplace conditions can be replicated fairly, and how survey results may be attacked. Mark helps legal teams evaluate those questions early, before research choices become litigation risks.
Tony Donato
Trademark Survey Consultant for Litigation
Tony Donato has consulted on complex litigation since 2004, with experience in research strategy, survey design, data analysis, and case management. As a trademark survey consultant for litigation, he helps bridge the gap between legal theory and practical survey execution.
In trademark matters, Tony works closely on the structure and management of survey research, including questionnaire development, respondent screening, fielding, analysis, and critique of opposing work. His role is especially important in cases where the details of execution may determine whether a survey is persuasive, vulnerable, or inadmissible.
Together, Mark Keegan and Tony Donato provide litigation teams with experienced judgment across the full life cycle of trademark survey evidence, from early case assessment through expert reports, rebuttal analysis, deposition preparation, and trial support.
When Trademark Survey Evidence May Matter
Trademark survey evidence may be useful when a legal dispute depends on how consumers perceive, interpret, or remember marketplace information. That includes cases where one party claims that another party’s mark, name, trade dress, product presentation, advertising, or packaging creates confusion or misleads consumers.
A trademark survey may help answer questions such as:
- Are consumers likely to believe two products or companies come from the same source?
- Does a mark identify a single commercial source in the minds of consumers?
- Has a descriptive term acquired secondary meaning?
- Is the mark strong enough to support the claim being made?
- Do consumers understand a label, package, or advertising claim in the way one party alleges?
- Does the opposing expert’s survey use a proper universe, control, stimulus, or question structure?
Not every case requires a survey. In some matters, the better strategic decision may be to critique an opposing survey, identify weaknesses in the evidence, or advise against conducting research that is unlikely to help. Keegan & Donato Consulting helps attorneys make that decision with a clear understanding of the relevant research standards and litigation stakes.
Experienced trademark survey experts can help determine whether survey evidence is likely to clarify the dispute, expose methodological risk, or create problems that outweigh its value.
Likelihood of Confusion Surveys
Likelihood of confusion is one of the most common reasons attorneys seek a trademark survey expert. A likelihood of confusion survey evaluates whether relevant consumers are likely to believe that two marks, products, companies, or services are affiliated, connected, sponsored, approved, or from the same source.
A well-designed likelihood of confusion survey must reflect the realities of the marketplace while minimizing bias. The survey universe must be designed to target and identify relevant consumers. The survey stimuli must be fairly presented to represent marketplace conditions. The survey controls must isolate and account for factors unrelated to the alleged source of confusion. The questions must avoid leading respondents. The analysis must distinguish meaningful confusion from baseline noise, guessing, or preexisting assumptions.
Keegan & Donato Consulting helps legal teams design, critique, and explain likelihood of confusion surveys in a way that connects the survey method to the legal issue being tested.
Secondary Meaning and Acquired Distinctiveness Surveys
In some trademark cases, the central issue is whether consumers associate a term, design, package, or other claimed mark with a single source. Secondary meaning and acquired distinctiveness surveys can help measure whether the consuming public recognizes the claimed mark as a source identifier, rather than as a merely descriptive or ornamental feature.
A secondary meaning survey requires careful attention to the respondent universe, stimulus presentation, question wording, and interpretation of results. Poorly designed surveys may overstate recognition, confuse familiarity with source association, or fail to separate brand meaning from general product awareness.
As trademark survey experts, Mark Keegan and Tony Donato help legal teams evaluate whether secondary meaning or acquired distinctiveness research is likely to produce useful, defensible evidence. We work with attorneys to develop survey evidence that addresses the legal question at issue, not just surface-level awareness.
Strength of Mark and Consumer Perception
Trademark disputes may also involve the strength of a mark, the degree of consumer recognition, or the way consumers understand marketplace claims, product presentation, packaging, labeling, and advertising. These issues can affect liability, damages, injunctive relief, and settlement strategy.
Consumer perception research can help evaluate whether the relevant audience recognizes a mark, understands a claim in a particular way, connects a designation to a single source, or interprets advertising and labeling as one party alleges. In these matters, survey evidence can bring structure to questions that might otherwise be argued through anecdote, assumption, or competing interpretations of the marketplace.
We helps attorneys evaluate whether consumer perception evidence is likely to clarify the strength of a mark, support or challenge claimed marketplace meaning, or expose weaknesses in an opposing party’s interpretation of consumer behavior.
Rebuttal of Opposing Trademark Surveys
Not every engagement requires conducting a new survey. In some cases, the most important work is evaluating the opposing expert’s survey and identifying whether the research reliably supports the opinions being offered. As trademark survey experts, Mark Keegan and Tony Donato help attorneys assess whether an opposing survey is methodologically sound, legally relevant, and vulnerable to rebuttal.
Keegan & Donato Consulting critiques trademark surveys for issues such as:
- Improper survey universe
- Biased or leading questions
- Weak or missing controls
- Unrealistic marketplace stimuli
- Ambiguous or unreliable response coding
- Overstated conclusions
- Failure to test the relevant legal issue
- Methodological choices that inflate or distort results
A flawed survey can create the appearance of empirical support while failing to measure the question that matters. Keegan & Donato Consulting helps attorneys identify those gaps, explain why they matter, and evaluate how weaknesses in an opposing survey may affect the broader case strategy.
A Practical Partner for Litigation Teams
Trademark survey work sits at the intersection of law, research, language, marketplace behavior, and litigation strategy. A technically competent survey is not always a useful litigation survey. The research must answer the right question, withstand methodological scrutiny, and help the legal team communicate its significance clearly.
Keegan & Donato Consulting works with attorneys throughout the process. That includes early case assessment, survey design, fielding, analysis, expert reports, rebuttal reports, deposition preparation, and trial support.
Mark Keegan and Tony Donato bring a practical, litigation-focused approach to consumer survey research. Their work helps legal teams understand what consumers perceive, what the data supports, where the risks are, and how survey evidence may fit into the broader litigation strategy.
Speak With Trademark Survey Experts
If your case involves likelihood of confusion, secondary meaning, acquired distinctiveness, Lanham Act claims, false advertising, consumer perception, or rebuttal of an opposing survey, Keegan & Donato Consulting can help evaluate the role survey evidence may play.
Speak with Keegan & Donato Consulting about whether a trademark survey, survey critique, or rebuttal analysis may support your litigation strategy.
Send us a note on how we can help you with your consumer survey research or a case in which you may be involved.