Trademarks & Trade Dress

With our expertise in consumer behavior and rigorous research methods, clients rely on us to assess the “mind of the consumer” by analyzing consumer perceptions and associations in trademark and trade dress matters. Our surveys have been accepted as evidence and relied on by courts in matters involving likelihood of consumer confusion, secondary meaning, genericness, brand strength, and other trademark characteristics.

We design, develop, and administer studies that meet legal standards to assess consumer perceptions of a trademark or trade dress, tailored to the relevant marketplace context. For example, in trademark infringement cases, our experts conduct highly customized Eveready or Squirt surveys to assess consumer confusion. For genericness matters, we conduct Teflon or Thermos surveys to assess consumers’ understanding of a mark as referring to a specific brand or to a category of goods. In disputes over whether a mark has acquired “secondary meaning,” our experts conduct consumer surveys to measure whether relevant consumers perceive a trademark or trade dress as a source identifier. Finally, in matters involving dilution claims, we design studies to determine whether a mark is famous and to what degree it is affected by blurring or tarnishment due to another party’s use of a similar trademark.

Analyses of consumer-generated content, such as online reviews, using a combination of best-practice coding methods and natural language processing (NLP) methods, can provide real-world evidence of consumer perceptions and associations.

Our Methods