Trademark Litigation

Trademark disputes can place valuable brands, customer relationships, and market positions at risk. Successfully resolving those disputes requires more than knowledge of trademark law. It requires litigators who understand how brands function in the marketplace, can evaluate complex questions of consumer perception and competitive conduct, and can develop a strategy aligned with the client’s broader business objectives.

At Perilla Knox & Hildebrandt, our trademark litigators represent trademark owners and accused infringers in disputes involving trademarks, service marks, trade dress, and related unfair competition claims. We handle trademark disputes from initial investigation and enforcement strategy through proceedings before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB), federal court litigation, settlement, trial, and appeal.

Our approach combines litigation experience with the perspective of a full-service intellectual property firm. We work closely with clients to understand their brands, products, customers, competitive landscape, and commercial priorities so that enforcement and defense strategies reflect not only the law, but also the practical realities of the marketplace.

Comprehensive trademark litigation experience.

Our intellectual property practice represents businesses throughout the lifecycle of their trademark rights—from clearance, prosecution, and portfolio development to enforcement and defense when disputes arise. That experience provides our litigators with a practical understanding of how trademark rights are established, maintained, challenged, and enforced.

Trademark disputes frequently turn on issues that extend beyond the registration itself, including priority of use, strength of the asserted mark, similarity of the parties' marks, relatedness of their goods and services, channels of trade, consumer sophistication, actual confusion, and evidence of marketplace use. We develop the factual record necessary to address those issues while maintaining focus on the commercial objectives driving the dispute.

We represent clients in both federal court litigation and contested proceedings before the TTAB, allowing us to develop an enforcement or defense strategy appropriate to the particular rights and remedies at issue.

Brand understanding. Litigation strategy.

Trademark cases often turn on how consumers encounter and understand brands in the real world. Our attorneys analyze the marks themselves together with the parties' products and services, advertising, websites, packaging, sales channels, customers, and other marketplace evidence relevant to consumer perception and likelihood of confusion.

We represent clients in disputes involving consumer products, technology, software and online services, manufacturing, retail, professional services, telecommunications, and other industries. Our experience includes disputes involving trademark infringement, false designation of origin, unfair competition, trade dress, dilution, counterfeiting, priority and ownership, and challenges to trademark registrations.

We combine that understanding with focused litigation strategy across issues including likelihood of confusion, preliminary and permanent injunctive relief, monetary remedies, surveys and expert testimony, discovery, and the strength, validity, and enforceability of asserted trademark rights.

From pre-suit enforcement through trial.

Effective trademark litigation strategy often begins before a lawsuit or TTAB proceeding is filed. We counsel clients regarding potential infringement, investigate third-party use, assess the strength and scope of trademark rights, prepare and respond to cease-and-desist letters, and evaluate the business and legal considerations associated with enforcement.

When formal proceedings become necessary, we represent clients throughout the dispute, including pleadings, discovery, depositions, expert proceedings, dispositive motions, mediation and settlement, trial, and appeal. We also represent clients in TTAB opposition and cancellation proceedings involving registration, priority, likelihood of confusion, descriptiveness, abandonment, nonuse, fraud, and other challenges to trademark rights.

Because trademark disputes can often be resolved without prolonged litigation, we evaluate opportunities for negotiated resolutions, coexistence agreements, consent agreements, geographic or product limitations, licensing arrangements, and other business-oriented solutions where appropriate.

Our Clients.

We represent trademark owners and accused infringers, including emerging companies, established businesses, entrepreneurs, manufacturers, retailers, and multinational corporations. Whether a client is protecting a core brand against infringement, challenging a conflicting trademark application or registration, or defending against allegations that its branding violates another party's rights, our objective is the same: develop a strategy grounded in the law, the marketplace, and the client's commercial priorities.

We recognize that a trademark dispute is ultimately a business problem as well as a legal one. A successful strategy must account for the value of the brand, the significance of the challenged conduct, litigation costs, competitive relationships, publicity concerns, and the practical value of the available remedies. Our attorneys work closely with clients throughout a dispute to ensure that litigation strategy remains aligned with those broader objectives.