To defend your brand or organization in trademark litigation in Austin, TX or elsewhere in the nation, it is important to hire a trademark survey expert like Keegan & Donato Consulting to help you achieve results that are both reliable and within your budget.
Keegan & Donato Consulting is a specialty research consultancy and one of the most experienced companies in the field of trademark litigation. With 25-plus years of combined experience, proven survey methodologies, and deep operational insight, principals Mark Keegan and Tony Donato provide expert research, expert reports, and testimony on behalf of plaintiffs and defendants in support of trademark infringement litigation.
How a Flawed Survey Could Damage Your Case
An overly broad survey that fails to address the key issues in a case, asks leading, suggestive or ambiguous questions, samples from the wrong geographic area, etc., even if based on an accepted standard methodology, may be deemed inadmissible or given little weight.
For example, in Elliott v. Google, Inc., 45 F. Supp. 3d 1156 – Dist. Court, D. Arizona (2014), the plaintiff’s surveys were deemed inadmissible because the Court determined them to be unscientific and poorly constructed. The survey expert was also rejected as unqualified “to design a survey or to interpret survey results.”
In Water Pik, Inc. v. Med-Systems, Inc., 726 F.3d 1142, 1144-50 (10th Cir. 2013), there is a lengthy discussion about the Court’s conclusion that survey evidence submitted by the defendant, “had too many methodological flaws to be of any probative value.”
Hiring qualified survey experts, such as Keegan & Donato Consulting, will have a significant impact on whether the court deems your survey results
Our Trademark Survey Specialties
We specialize in these and many other topics within the fields of trademark and trade dress:
- Likelihood of Confusion – Our firm has designed and critiqued hundreds of likelihood of confusion studies to ascertain whether consumers are confused by a party’s use of a contested mark.
- Strength of Mark –Distinctive marks are protected, and the levels of legal protection are directly linked to the strength of the mark. We can help you understand the extent to which consumers are familiar with your client’s brand.
- Secondary Meaning– We can design a survey to target relevant consumers in your client’s market and determine the extent to which they associate a contested mark with single or multiple sources.
- Acquired Distinctiveness– Consumer surveys can help determine whether consumers associate a mark with a certain product and whether the mark is distinctive enough not to cause confusion about the origin of goods or services associated with it.
- Lanham Act Claims – A well-designed consumer research study can provide empirical evidence on the issue of whether an alleged trademark infringement is having a real-world effect on consumers.
Most of our consumer studies cost between $30,000 and $80,000 to complete, and $55,000 is the most typical cost. We work on a fixed rate or hourly basis depending on your needs and will always provide you with an estimate of project costs prior to engagement.
Get in touch with the experts at Keegan & Donato Consulting at (914) 967-9421 to learn how a trademark survey could help bolster your case in Austin, TX. We will work to deliver the survey evidence you need.