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Trademarks

A Trademark Lawyer Will Help Protect Your Brand

A trademark lawyer helps enforce the laws that provide important protections for companies that use certain symbols, word, phrases or design elements to identify themselves or their products.  That includes business names and logos, as well as slogans, product names and other phrases associated with a company or institution.

At Glancy Prongay & Murray, our trademark lawyers help a wide range of businesses and institutions protect their brands by obtaining and enforcing trademarks.  That includes working with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and litigating cases in court.  We also strive to resolve trademark issues by proactively monitoring for trademark infringement and alerting abusers of our clients’ rights.

Our firm has been serving clients across the country for three decades.  We have a strong track record of success for the people, institutions and businesses that we represent.  That is why we have been recognized as one of the leading plaintiff’s law firms in the country.

Seeking Trademark Protection

A company or institution that wants to get a trademark is well advised to register with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.  Although you can file an application without professional legal assistance, an experienced trademark lawyer can help you navigate the process and avoid many of the common pitfalls.

The process starts with selecting a mark that is eligible for federal registration that can be defended in court.  You cannot protect a brand element that is already covered by another trademark.  Even if the marks are not identical, federal law gives trademark holders protection against similar designs and phrases that may confuse consumers.

Generic terms and commonly used words are not eligible for trademark protection.  Similarly, words and phrases that simply describe what the product does or often also not protected, at least not immediately.  Instead, a company would have to use the word or phrase so often —and the business would need to have the requisite level of success — that consumers specifically associate the mark with the good or service.

Protecting Your Trademark

Although the Patent and Trademark Office reviews applications and registers marks, it does not enforce trademarks.

The best way to safeguard your trademark is to use it.  Even if you have registered the trademark, another business can challenge it as abandoned if there is no sign that you continue to keep using it.  Businesses are well advised to use the mark consistently — using the phrase or design as it was described in the registration application.

Anyone who has obtained trademark registration also has to periodically renew that registration, usually every five years.  It is vital to meet renewal deadline because the Patent and Trademark Office will otherwise cancel the registration.  The office doesn’t provide exemptions and does little or nothing to remind trademark holders when there renewal deadlines are approaching.

How a Trademark Lawyer from Our Firm Can Help You

If you are considering seeking trademark protection or want to protect your trademark from unapproved use, it is important to seek the advice of an experienced intellectual property attorney or IP litigation lawyer, depending on how far your case has progressed. At Glancy Prongay & Murray, each trademark lawyer has the resources and experience to handle a wide range of brand protection issues. Give us a call or contact us online to schedule a consultation today.

Court Recognition

“And without question, the Court is of the opinion that the value of benefit that’s been conferred to the class is extremely sizable and that this Court is certainly aware that the skill and efficiency of plaintiff’s counsel is what attributed to this settlement, and they are learned securities counsel. The Court is mindful of that, and as a result they were able to sort of weed their way through the complex issues in this case, and also to bring this about — bring about a settlement rather in short order as these matters go. So the Court certainly attributes that to counsel’s skill and efficiency, as well as the ability to work with the adversaries in this matter.”

–Hon. Susan D. Wigention, U.S. District Judge, District of New Jersey

“Class Counsel has conducted the litigation and achieved the Settlement in good faith and with skill, perseverance and diligent advocacy”

— Hon. Donovan W. Frank, U.S. District Judge, District of Minnesota

“The court finds that the Settlement Fund… created by Class Counsel is an exceptional result… The settlement is significantly above the average securities class action settlement when measured as a percentage of losses recovered… The court finds that Class Counsel, particularly Co-Lead Counsel, exerted tremendous effort on behalf of the class in the prosecution of this action… The Court finds that Class Counsel skillfully prosecuted this action, particularly given that this case was unusually complex relative to most securities fraud class actions. ”

–Hon. Dickran M. Tevrizian (Ret.), U.S. District Court Judge, Central District of California

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