If you are a trademark attorney looking for litigation support in Oklahoma City, consider a specialty research consultancy like Keegan & Donato Consulting. We offer vast experience in the full spectrum of trademark infringement matters.
Keegan & Donato Consulting can provide independent consumer-based survey research that will help you effectively advance or defend your case. Our expertise as marketing and survey experts includes:
- State-of-the-art survey design and execution
- Full-service data gathering and reporting capabilities
- Collaboration on complex commercial litigation issues
- Damages analysis and forensic economic analysis
- Pilot studies and exploratory research
- Critique or rebuttal of opposing experts’ studies and reports
- Advice on deposition and trial questioning of opposing experts
- Expert witness testimony at deposition and trial
The firm has designed hundreds of studies across industries ranging from designer apparel to high-end audio products and everything in between. The real-world results we have collected have provided our clients a foundation for presenting fact-based evidence to support their case strategies.
Why Hire a Survey Expert?
Good survey evidence can be powerful. However, consumer surveys are not typically accepted without challenge. Courts demand accurate, real-world data, and design flaws can result in partial or full exclusion of survey evidence from a case.
Factors such as how a survey universe is defined; how respondents are selected; in what order survey questions are asked; whether the questions are ambiguous, leading or subjective; whether the survey data is properly analyzed and reported; and whether the survey expert is appropriately trained and qualified, help the courts determine whether or not a survey was properly designed and well-executed.
For example, in Pinterest, Inc. v. Pintrips, Inc., Case No. 13-cv-04608-HSG, Dist. Court, N.D. California (2015), the plaintiff introduced two surveys to support its claim of consumer confusion over the defendant’s use of the word “pin.” The Court, however, determined that “fatal defects in the design of each survey render their results meaningless to the resolution of this lawsuit.”
With regard to one survey, the Court assigned it no weight because “the survey design does not permit the Court to draw any inference about whether… any survey respondents would have associated the Pintrips website with Pinterest.”
The findings of the other survey were rejected because the survey was not “conducted with a pool of respondents drawn from the general public, and, accordingly, the Court cannot consider its findings as evidence that the general public was familiar with Pinterest’s marks.”
How We Can Help
Selecting the right type of survey for a case requires skill and experience. Keegan & Donato Consulting approaches survey design on a case-by-case basis in view of the fact that each case is unique. We work closely with clients to understand and appreciate the fundamental issues driving the case, and work to maximize the value of the research evidence to the overall case strategy.
For trademark attorneys in Oklahoma City and across the nation, Keegan & Donato Consulting provides litigation support to ensure that the evidence you introduce will hold up to scrutiny from courts and opposing experts. Get in touch with us today at (914) 967-9421 to find out how we can help.