Hiring a company like Keegan & Donato Consulting with experience in conducting surveys in conjunction with trademark litigation will help ensure that your consumer survey evidence will stand up to judicial scrutiny.
Keegan & Donato Consulting offers extraordinary expertise in the field of consumer research studies and our work has been admitted into evidence in state and federal courts, at arbitration, and to the NAD and the TTAB. Principals Mark Keegan and Tony Donato also have extensive testimony experience.
Our Capabilities
A knowledgeable expert can help determine whether or not a descriptive mark has acquired secondary meaning; whether or not competing marks are likely to confuse consumers; whether or not a mark is famous; and whether or not one brand’s mark is likely to cause dilution to a competing mark.
Our firm’s capabilities include state-of-the art survey designs that are probative of the relevant issues in each case, are capable of targeting specific consumer populations with appropriate universe selection and sampling frames, and feature cutting-edge rotation and randomization of hundreds of question types with customizable complex skip and display logic when appropriate.
Keegan & Donato Consulting can also help you:
- analyze the economic, financial or technical complexities of your case;
- assess a variety of different case strategies;
- determine which deposition questions to ask;
- prepare a testifying expert for deposition and trial;
- critique the potential weaknesses in an adversary’s survey evidence in a rebuttal report.
These services can have a significant impact on your client’s case.
The Value of Hiring a Qualified Expert
Consumer research surveys are highly vulnerable to criticism, and courts may discount all or part of a survey if it is found to be flawed in design or methodology or to have been conducted by an unqualified expert.
In THOIP v. Walt Disney Co., 690 F.Supp.2d 218 – Dist. Court, SD. New York (2010), for example, the plaintiff argued that its mark had been infringed by two lines of Walt Disney Company T-shirts. Both sides argued that their opponent’s consumer confusion survey was not methodologically sound, and should thereby render the surveys and accompanying testimony inadmissible.
Disney’s survey evidence was accepted by the court, but THIOP’s survey was determined inadmissible because it “did not sufficiently approximate the manner in which consumers encountered the parties’ products in the marketplace, which severely diminished the reliability and probative force of the survey” [see 690 F.Supp.2d 240].
When you hire Keegan & Donato Consulting, we take all necessary steps to ensure that our consumer research studies have a solid methodological foundation that can withstand the rigors of litigation.
When your trademark litigation calls for conducting a survey, expert advice can help bolster your case. Keegan & Donato Consulting offers vast experience and can quickly deliver intelligence within a wide range of budgets. Call us today at (914) 967-9421 to find out how we can help.