When you need survey research to support your trademark litigation, Keegan & Donato Consulting can help. Hiring qualified survey experts like us will have a significant impact on whether the court deems your survey results admissible.
Keegan & Donato Consulting provides a complete suite of services, including consulting on litigation strategy for both plaintiff and defendant clients, consumer research studies, expert reports, testimony in trademark and trade-dress litigation, and testimony at deposition and/or trial.
We can provide you with technical and strategic advice; help you analyze the economic, financial and/or technical complexities of your case; help you determine suitable deposition questions to ask; help you prepare a testifying expert for deposition and trial; or critique the potential weaknesses in an opposing party’s survey evidence in a rebuttal report.
We have been engaged by leading IP litigation firms across the nation, such as Day Pitney LLP in New York City, Giampolo Law Group in Philadelphia, Girard Gibbs LLP in San Francisco, and Arent Fox in Washington, DC, to help them navigate the trademark infringement cases their clients face.
Flawed Surveys Can Damage Your Case
Consumer surveys can play an important role in proving likelihood of confusion, secondary meaning, strength of mark, acquired distinctiveness, consumer perception and other issues, when other scientific evidence is simply not available.
Consumer research surveys are highly vulnerable to criticism, however, and courts are careful to scrutinize them for methodological flaws. Issues of sample selection, interviewer bias, or suggestive wording may cause a judge to give a survey little weight, or deem some or all of the results inadmissible.
For example, in Elliott v. Google, Inc., 45 F. Supp. 3d 1156 – Dist. Court, D. Arizona (2014), the plaintiff’s surveys were deemed inadmissible because the Court determined them to be unscientific and poorly constructed. The survey expert was also rejected as unqualified “to design a survey or to interpret survey results” [see 45 F.Supp.3d 1167-1170].
In Water Pik, Inc. v. Med-Systems, Inc., 726 F.3d 1142, 1144-50 (10th Cir. 2013), there is a lengthy discussion wherein the Court concluded that the defendant’s survey evidence “had too many methodological flaws to be of any probative value.”
Keegan & Donato Consulting has designed and executed hundreds of consumer survey research studies in many different industries and collaborated on a wide range of marketing and complex commercial litigation issues, including damages analysis, forensic economic analysis, and related areas.
Principals Mark Keegan and Anthony Donato have 25+ years of combined experience and education in consumer-based survey research and data analysis, and follow a solid methodological foundation in survey design, execution and presentation.
Mr. Keegan’s background in complex litigation on behalf of clients involving marketing, economics, business, and financial issues, together with Mr. Donato’s background in research, survey design and execution, strategy and data analysis, create a complementary blend of strategic and analytical skills.
We are capable of quickly delivering intelligence within a wide range of budgets.
If you believe trademark survey research could support your trademark litigation, get in touch with Keegan & Donato Consulting at (914) 967-9421 to take advantage of our training, expertise, and data-gathering expertise.