Trademark Surveys Designer

Keegan & Donato Consulting can help you design a methodologically sound trademark survey that is both reliable and within your budget.

Our firm has vast experience in the design, execution, and critique of consumer research studies that have been admitted into evidence in state and federal courts, at arbitration, to the NAD, and to the TTAB. Principals Mark Keegan and Tony Donato also have extensive testimony experience.

Keegan & Donato Consulting has developed surveys for plaintiffs and defendants across the nation on issues related to likelihood of confusion, strength of mark, secondary meaning, acquired distinctiveness, dilution, genericness, false advertising, and many other trademark and trade dress analyses.

With 25+ combined years of experience conducting and critiquing consumer survey research, we have the ability to design studies that avoid the methodological pitfalls that so often afflict competing research studies.

Our Survey Principles

Courts often find that trademark surveys contain significant flaws, such as asking leading, suggestive or ambiguous questions, under-inclusive or over-inclusive sampling of the consumer universe, sampling from the wrong geographic area, and so on. These flaws can reduce or destroy the credibility of the survey.

Consider, for example, First Data Merchant Services Corp. v. SecurityMetrics, Inc., No. RDB–12–2568, 2014 WL 6871581 (D. Md. Dec. 3, 2014), in which the report, opinions, and testimony of the defendant’s survey expert were excluded by the Court from the false advertising portion of the case due to the expert’s failure to use a control to test for consumer confusion (a “significant flaw”), and “several other troubling aspects” of its methodology.

Keegan & Donato Consulting follows established principles of consumer survey research beginning with a rigorous and valid survey design that explores the relevant issues in the case. Some of the industry best practices that we build into our survey designs include:

• Properly defined universe selection and sampling frame;
• Rigorous and valid survey design that is probative of the relevant issues in the case;
• Inclusion of representative, qualified respondents;
• Use of procedures to minimize potential biases in data collection;
• Use of clear, precise, non-leading questions;
• Use of procedures to reduce guessing among respondents; and
• Full analysis and reporting of the data gathered.

In addition, we use an industry-leading online survey software platform which facilitates the programming and execution of advanced survey designs, including complex skip logic and advanced rotation and randomization of questions, answer options, and stimuli. These features are employed whenever appropriate.

We obtain our survey sample 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.

Each case is unique, and we collaborate with clients to understand the fundamental issues of their cases in order to maximize the value of the survey evidence to the overall case strategy.

Principals Mark Keegan and Tony Donato can help you and your client design and execute a methodologically sound survey that will provide persuasive evidence of consumer perceptions about products and brands at issue and will withstand the rigors of litigation.

When you need trademark survey experts with incomparable skills in design and execution, get in touch with us at (914) 967-9421 to learn more about how we can help.

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