If you are looking for highly qualified consultants on trademark surveys, Keegan & Donato Consulting has the experience, training, and data-gathering expertise you need and will collaborate with you to understand the fundamental issues of your case.
Keegan & Donato Consulting is a specialty research consultancy and one of the most experienced companies in the field of trademark litigation. With more than 25 years of combined experience, proven survey methodologies, and deep operational insight, principals Mark Keegan and Tony Donato provide expert research, expert reports, and testimony on behalf of plaintiffs and defendants in support of trademark infringement litigation.
The firm has designed hundreds of consumer surveys across many industries to test a wide variety of Lanham Act claims, including likelihood of confusion, strength of mark, acquired distinctiveness, false designation of origin, trade dress infringement, and a wide range of other issues, including damages analysis, forensic economic analysis, and related areas.
As experienced consultants, we can help you analyze the economic, financial or technical complexities of your case; assist in your assessment of different case strategies; determine which deposition questions to ask; help you prepare a testifying expert for deposition and trial; or 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.
Do You Need a Consumer Survey?
Trademark litigation surveys provide direct evidence about consumer perceptions that can be difficult to establish by means of visual comparisons and expert testimony alone. While presenting survey evidence is not mandatory, it may help you build a stronger case.
There are, of course, strategic reasons why you may decide to proceed without survey evidence. Perhaps the client cannot afford to invest in a survey. Perhaps your pilot survey did not produce adequate results. Or, perhaps the consumer survey presented by your adversary is so flawed that you hope a rebuttal expert can critique the results without having to conduct another study.
Regardless of the reasons, there are pitfalls to proceeding without survey evidence conducted by trained independent experts using sound methodologies in a trademark infringement matter.
In Malletier v. Dooney & Bourke, Inc., 525 F.Supp.2d 558, 569-70 (Dist. Court S.D.N.Y; 2007), for example, the Court excluded the evidence and testimony of all three of the plaintiff’s survey experts and two of the defendant’s three survey experts on the basis that the surveys were unreliable, plagued by significant methodological flaws, and that “any probative value was substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice and misleading the jury.”
Consequently, it is crucial to hire qualified survey experts. Methodologically sound consumer research studies and expert testimony from Keegan & Donato Consulting will meet the courts’ standards and can serve as powerful evidence in your case.
As trademark survey consultants, Keegan & Donato Consulting can provide the support you need. Get in touch with us today at (914) 967-9421 to learn more about our wide range of services.