Trademarks

Pillsbury’s international Trademarks team handles marks for companies large and small, emerging and established, in the U.S. and abroad, in every industry. Our attorneys know how to apply trademark law to meet clients’ needs and solve problems in practical and commercially realistic ways. We manage our team to give clients the best, quickest, and most economical service, while providing customized service with experienced trademark lawyers and legal assistants dedicated to each client.

Our Trademarks team manages thousands of domestic and foreign trademarks of all types, including trade dress product and package designs and graphics. We handle worldwide clearance and registration, due diligence, licensing, franchising and merchandising agreements, anti-counterfeiting and trademark enforcement, defense, and litigation. Pillsbury lawyers also understand the details of the Madrid Protocol treaty and the international registration system for trademarks.

Experience With Marks in Every Scenario
Adding value to Pillsbury’s deep trademark experience is the familiarity of our team with laws that frequently interact with marks in complex ways. These include laws on copyright, design patents, industrial designs, utility patents, false advertising, sweepstakes and promotions, as well as regulations on the marketing of pharmaceuticals, alcoholic beverages, and many others.

Our team has also worked on all types of Internet issues involving trademarks, including ICANN proceedings, domain name transfers, metatags, keywords, cybersquatting, and more. In addition, our lawyers have experience counseling clients on trademark aspects of IP holding companies, secured transactions, regulatory naming approvals, mergers and acquisitions, public offerings, and bankruptcies.

Trademark Management Systems - Pillsbury customizes secure online systems for managing clients’ trademark portfolios. These systems hold all images and fully searchable data on the client's trademark applications and registrations, oppositions and disputes, and related correspondence, with libraries for storing searches, licenses, agreements, and any other documents you may want for day-to-day portfolio monitoring. Learn more about our Trademark Management Systems on our web page.

Representative Trademark Matters

• Quickly Clearing a Disputed Trademark – Successfully defeated a larger company’s request for a preliminary injunction against Clearwire, allowing our client to continue using their CLEAR C trademark.
• Winning the Recall of a Competitor's Infringing Product –  For Technimed, secured not only an injunction on competitor packaging that was “confusingly similar” to our client’s, but a complete recall of the competitor’s product from more than 1,000 retail outlets-- a rarity in trademark cases.
• Clarifying a Lack of Trademark Confusion in Online Marketing – Won a summary judgment finding no trademark confusion for our client Mattel, in a decision acknowledging that there is no such thing as “google confusion.”
• Protecting the Value of a Trademark – Won a Ninth Circuit reversal of summary judgment, followed by a federal jury award of trademark protection and $8.6 million in compensatory and punitive damages for our client, Spin Master Ltd., over its trademarked “Would You Rather…?” game and related products.
• Filing Suit Against “Real Housewives” for Theft of Health Water Idea – On behalf of a Canadian client, filed suit against several companies and cast members of the reality TV program “The Real Housewives of New Jersey,” for theft of the concept used for a bottled-water product, misappropriation of the trademark, and breach of contract.