Are you involved in an IP dispute that requires an expert witness? Keegan & Donato Consulting has over 25 years of combined experience in consumer research studies and has served the nation’s top law firms.
Keegan & Donato Consulting is a specialty research consultancy that designs and executes consumer-based surveys for attorneys and their clients in cases involving likelihood of confusion, acquired distinctiveness, secondary meaning, and a wide variety of marketing and commercial litigation issues.
- Mark Keegan has spent more than 15 years formulating case strategies in complex litigation. He has consulted on a wide range of issues, from marketing and international business to consumer research for Lanham Act claims. He is licensed to practice law in New York and Connecticut and is an AMA-designated Professional Certified Marketer.
- Tony Donato has served as a consultant in complex litigation matters since 2004 and has a background in marketing, intellectual property, and consumer behavior cases covering trademark, copyright, patent, best efforts, advertising, consumer surveys, business damages, and business marketing ethics. He received a Master of Public Policy from Georgetown University and has a strong analytical background.
We have worked as experts on behalf of plaintiffs and defendants, providing reports, affidavits, declarations, survey research, and expert witness testimony in support of litigation in state and federal courts, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB), the NAD, at arbitration, and at other specialty venues.
Choosing 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 have a flawed design or methodology or to have been conducted by an unqualified expert.
It is important to select an expert with extensive experience, the right educational background, and the skills to design and execute a methodologically sound survey.
In THOIP v. Walt Disney Co., 690 F.Supp.2d 218 – Dist. Court, SD. New York (2010), for example, the plaintiff in the trademark dispute argued that its mark had been infringed by two lines of T-shirts of the Walt Disney Company. Both sides argued that the other’s expert survey concerning consumer confusion was methodologically unsound, rendering the survey and accompanying testimony inadmissible.
Disney’s survey evidence was accepted by the court, but THIOP’s survey was determined to be 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].
With an unparalleled knowledge of the science and methodology behind consumer research surveys, Keegan & Donato Consulting has the ability to identify flaws and weaknesses in a study that may not be apparent to an untrained eye, but may help you refute the credibility of an expert’s work.
Our 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.
When you need the services of a highly qualified IP dispute expert witness, call (914) 967-9421 to learn how Keegan & Donato Consulting can help you strengthen your case.