When you need trademark survey evidence to bolster your case, hire a prominent firm with the expertise to help you and your clients prevail in litigation.
Keegan & Donato Consulting is a specialty research consultancy. We can provide independent consumer-based survey research that will help you effectively try or defend your case.
We are members of ESOMAR, the leading global association for market, social and opinion research, the International Trademark Association (INTA), and the American Marketing Association (AMA). Mr. Keegan is an AMA-designated Professional Certified Marketer.
Survey Designs and Methodology
Survey research is used to assess consumer confusion, misleading advertising claims, copyright infringement, trademark infringement, disparagement, and a wide variety of other disputes. 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
Keegan & Donato Consulting employs both classic survey designs and develops innovative custom survey designs to meet our clients’ 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, features that are employed whenever appropriate.
Our survey sample is obtained from leading marketing research companies that maintain multi-million-member online consumer panels. These companies are top providers of survey sample in the U.S. and are used by prominent marketing research firms.
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.
What Can Trademark Surveys Measure?
Consumer surveys can be very useful in measuring a number of issues related to intellectual property matters because they can provide crucial information about how consumers perceive marks, product designs, colors, websites, and other stimuli. For example:
- Likelihood of confusion: A well-designed survey can provide direct scientific evidence of the extent to which consumers are confused by a relationship between the parties’ marks, brands or products.
- Secondary meaning: Secondary meaning can be measured by means of a consumer survey, and may provide strong evidence that a mark is no longer descriptive and has become a distinctive identifier of a brand in the minds of consumers.
- Acquired distinctiveness: When a mark acquires distinctiveness, it becomes capable of serving as a trademark by associating in the mind of consumers with a particular source of goods and services. Consumer surveys can help determine whether the mark is distinctive enough not to cause confusion.
Methodologically sound trademark surveys from Keegan & Donato Consulting will meet the courts’ standards for design, execution and analysis and can serve as powerful evidence in your case. Get in touch with Keegan & Donato Consulting at (914) 967-9421 to find out how we can help.
Learn more about our services:
Likelihood of confusion
Strength of mark
Secondary meaning
Acquired distinctiveness
Lanham Act claims
Consumer perception
Consumer understanding
Rebuttal work