As you evaluate trademark survey consultants to strengthen your Boston litigation, consider Keegan & Donato Consulting. We offer the experience, expertise, and data-gathering capabilities you need and can help you develop a powerful case or rebuttal strategy.
The vast experience of Keegan & Donato Consulting includes conducting consumer surveys to test a wide variety of Lanham Act claims, such as likelihood of confusion, strength of mark, secondary meaning, acquired distinctiveness, trade dress, and others, false and deceptive advertising, consumer perception, and expert witness testimony on consumer survey, marketing and economic issues.
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.
Avoiding Survey Flaws
Surveys can provide powerful and valid evidence, but an overly broad survey that fails to address the key issues in a case, even if based on an accepted methodology, may be deemed inadmissible or given little weight by the Court.
In Kate Spade LLC v. Saturdays Surf LLC, 950 F.Supp. 2d 639 – Dist. Court, S.D. New York (2013), for example, the Court found consumer survey testimony presented by both the plaintiff and defendant to be of limited value and afforded the surveys no weight in this trademark infringement litigation.
Saturdays Surf LLC’s survey was determined to suffer from methodological flaws that raised “serious questions about the leading nature of the survey design.” Kate Spade LLC’s survey was also found to be poorly designed.
In Water Pik, Inc. v. Med-Systems, Inc., 726 F.3d 1142, 1144-50 (10th Cir. 2013), there is a lengthy discussion about why the Court determined that survey evidence submitted by the defendant in this trademark infringement and unfair competition case, “had too many methodological flaws to be of any probative value.”
For reasons like these, it is crucial to employ experts, such as Keegan & Donato Consulting, who can:
- conduct surveys with rigorous methodological principles
- document and support the choice of survey questions and sample method
- minimize the possibility of bias
- carefully analyze the data gathered
- support the results with knowledgeable, reliable expert testimony
We provide nationwide service to attorneys practicing in federal and state courts, before arbitration panels, the TTAB, the NAD, and other specialty venues, and have been engaged by leading firms, including Riemer & Braunstein LLP in Boston, Debevoise & Plimpton LLP in New York City, Arnold & Porter LLP in San Francisco, and Stanley, Mandel & Iola, LLP in San Diego.
The expertise of trademark survey consultants like Keegan & Donato Consulting can have a significant impact on your client’s case in Boston. We can quickly deliver intelligence within a wide range of budgets to help bolster your strategy. Get in touch with us today at (914) 967-9421 to learn more.