Hiring qualified trademark survey companies, such as Keegan & Donato Consulting, for your litigation in Fort Worth will help ensure that your survey evidence will stand up to judicial scrutiny.
Keegan & Donato Consulting, a specialty research consultancy, is located in Rye, New York. We provide a complete suite of services, including consulting on litigation strategy for both plaintiff and defendant clients across the nation, consumer research studies, expert reports, testimony in trademark and trade-dress litigation, testimony at deposition and/or trial, and rebuttal of opposing parties’ surveys when applicable.
Principals Mark Keegan and Tony Donato offer more than 25 years of combined experience and education in consumer-based survey research and data analysis in the context of intellectual property disputes, and follow a solid methodological foundation in survey design, execution and presentation.
Our Survey Best Practices
Some of the industry best practices that Keegan & Donato Consulting builds into the firm’s survey designs include:
- Appropriate universe selection and sampling frame;
- Inclusion of representative, qualified respondents;
- Use of procedures to minimize potential biases in data collection;
- Use of objective, non-leading questions;
- Use of procedures to reduce guessing among respondents; and
- Full analysis and reporting of survey data.
We employ classic survey designs or innovative custom survey designs to suit each client’s needs. Our industry-leading online survey software platform facilitates the programming and execution of advanced survey designs, including complex skip logic and advanced rotation and randomization of questions, answer options, and stimuli.
Do You Really Need a Survey?
The Lanham Act is the statutory basis for most trademark claims. The issues raised are well-suited to testing through consumer survey research by addressing the ways in which consumers interpret—and misinterpret—names, symbols, and other marks used by businesses in commerce. In fact, the resulting evidence can be quite persuasive.
Although the Lanham Act does not require litigants to introduce consumer surveys in litigation, a number of court decisions have drawn negative inferences from the absence of survey evidence and discussed how the absence impacted their decisions.
In Pharmacia Corp. v. Alcon Labs, Inc., 201 F.Supp. 2d 335, 373 (D.N.J. 2002), for example, the court noted that, “Pharmacia is not legally required to conduct a confusion survey. But under the circumstances of this case, Pharmacia’s failure to conduct any confusion survey weighs against its request for a preliminary injunction. Such a failure, particularly when the trademark owner is financially able, justifies an inference that the plaintiff believes the results of the survey will be unfavorable.”
Likewise, in King-Size, Inc. v. Frank’s King-Size Clothes, Inc., 547 F.Supp. 1138, 1162 (S.D. Tex. 1982), the court noted that, “Plaintiffs did not present to the Court a survey or any other direct evidence of actual confusion. The Court views these omissions as both suspect and significant.”
As you evaluate trademark survey companies for your IP litigation in Fort Worth, call Keegan & Donato Consulting at (914) 967-9421 to find out how our highly qualified firm can help.