Protecting your Intellectual Property
Intellectual property spans a wide range of disciplines, as does Merchant & Gould’s Design Patent & Trade Dress Group. Our Group is comprised of practitioners who are experts in both obtaining and enforcing utility patents, utility models, design patents, trademarks, trade dress, copyrights, and trade secrets, which provides our clients a full range of capabilities and technical experience to help implement a strategic intellectual property plan that aligns with individual business goals. We are committed to providing the highest quality global intellectual property services to our clients.
Providing a full spectrum of global intellectual property services.
As a multi-disciplinary firm providing full-service intellectual property services, we serve you with holistic and value-added strategies to help you accomplish your business objectives, which includes assessing the value of your design patents and trade dress rights, and securing multiple layers of protection for these valuable assets to secure your position in the marketplace. Our attorneys command a deep understanding about how the different types of intellectual property (e.g., trade dress and design patents), domestically and internationally, can be used offensively and defensively in an integrated intellectual property strategy.
Serving clients with vision and foresight.
Our attorneys work to build enduring relationships with each and every client, creating a partnership in which we work with your company to develop strategic plans for your intellectual property. Our goal is to combine a deep knowledge of your company's history with proactive legal counsel as a key to your success. We consistently provide a full range of top-level intellectual property services to help your company thrive now and decades into the future. We regularly provide training to our clients on current trends and case law to meet their specific needs and to effectively mitigate legal risks.
Merging practical industry experience with legal insight.
Many of us had careers in industry before becoming attorneys. As attorneys, we have developed strong cross-disciplinary skills as active members in other groups in the firm. The Design Patent and Trade Dress Group includes former USPTO Patent Examiners and former Trademark Examining Attorneys, who understand first-hand how to avoid weaknesses in patent and trademark applications that might result in a refusal. We apply our vast experience to solve your toughest IP challenges, collaborating with you to define and refine your inventions, patent portfolios, and long-term IP strategies.
Our expertise in developing, managing, and protecting your valuable brands using an integrative intellectual property approach is why companies with some of the most recognized brands and products work with the Merchant & Gould team.
Types of Matters
Our Design Patent and Trade Dress Group routinely works with clients on the following types of matters:
- Coordinating Utility Patent, Utility Model, Design Patent, Trade Dress, and Copyright protection
- Intellectual property strategy
- Patentability investigations
- Design Patent clearance assessment and freedom to operate investigations
- Conducting due diligence investigations
- Product marking strategies
- Trade Dress counseling
- Trade Dress clearance, registration and enforcement
- Design Patent non-infringement opinions
- Design Patent invalidity opinions
- Preparing, filing, and prosecuting U.S., direct foreign and Hague System for Industrial Design applications for domestic clients
- Preparing, filing, and prosecuting U.S. and International Design Patent applications on behalf of foreign clients
- Appeals before both the Patent Trial & Appeal Board and Trademark Trial & Appeal Board
- Patent and Trade Dress portfolio management
- Intellectual property licensing
- Policing and managing design patent and trade dress portfolios
- Investigation of infringement
- Enforcing design patent and trade dress rights
- Online marketplace enforcement and counseling
- Counseling for the enforcement of Copyrights for art, music, publishing, licensing, and related legal matters
Technologies and Industries
Attorneys in the Design Patent and Trade Dress Group have the technical experience to serve clients in a diverse array of technologies and industries, including:
- Sports and sporting equipment
- Consumer Products, such as Home, Garden and Appliances.
- Footwear and Apparel
- Pet and animal products
- Graphical User Interfaces
- Heavy equipment
- Lawn and landscaping
- Transportation including Automotive and Aircraft
- Building and construction
- Boating and marine
- Shooting Sports
- Farming and agriculture
- Telecommunications
- Food and food processing
- Filtration
- Vending
- Medical devices and diagnostics
- Packaging
- Electronics and Software
- Hydraulic systems
- Toys
- Valves