United States (National)

Firm overview

Sideman & Bancroft is one of the premier brand protection law firms in the United States. Our team includes highly experienced lawyers and former federal prosecutors, and global security and brand protection experts with extensive backgrounds leading anti-counterfeiting, anti-piracy and customs interdiction and investigation programs in both private companies and law enforcement agencies. We provide customized and scalable brand protection solutions designed to enable clients to achieve their goals for trademark protection and worldwide branding in all stages of a brand’s life cycle.

The value of trademarks, service marks and trade dress is greater than ever before. We routinely prosecute and defend infringement, dilution, unfair competition and false advertising claims involving both registered and unregistered trademarks and service marks, in addition to pursuing a wide variety of trade dress claims. Protection of a global brand means understanding risks and concerns regarding enforcement issues in the U.S. as well as in foreign jurisdictions. We obtain ex parte writs of seizure for counterfeit parts and labels in the U.S. and other countries. In collaboration with local counsel, we pursue and defend trademark and service mark claims in jurisdictions around the world.

The firm achieves tremendous results for clients by combining the traditional intellectual property and brand protection practices of counseling, prosecution and enforcement with specialty components such as:

• Criminal intellectual property enforcement
• Criminal and civil gray market investigations and enforcement
• Global investigation management
• Online anti-counterfeit monitoring
• Global customs advice and program development

In particular, the team assists clients in implementing brand protection strategies to halt the importation of counterfeit goods and prevent the sale of counterfeit products. As part of this effort, we help companies target and investigate counterfeit traffickers, and then assemble and analyze evidence to support successful criminal investigations and prosecutions as well as civil litigation resulting in asset freezes and other remedies.

Since 2001, our team has actively worked with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Homeland Security Investigations, Secret Service and other state and federal law enforcement agencies throughout the U.S. in its representation of victim companies, resulting in dozens of criminal convictions, jail sentences and restitution orders. Relying on our team’s international law enforcement experience, we also actively coordinate investigations and law enforcement referrals in jurisdictions all over the world.

Network Memberships:

• INTA, IACC, AGMA, PCPC, ChIPs, SFIPLA, NAMWOLF:
• The firm is a certified women-owned law firm

Firm overview

Kelly IP is an innovative boutique focused on all aspects of trademark, trade dress, copyright, design, domain name, and unfair competition law. The founding partners – Dave Kelly, Rob Litowitz, Linda McLeod, Lynn Jordan, and Stephanie Bald – all are recognised leaders in the trademark field and are known for their creative, practical, responsive, and cost-effective advice. They believe that brand owners deserve lawyers who are as passionate as they are about nurturing and protecting their brands and creative works, and they brought this vision to fruition by opening Kelly IP in May 2013. In doing so, the partners leveraged their 110 combined years of 'big law' IP experience – including leading hundreds of civil litigations and thousands of oppositions and cancellations, sending thousands of demand letters, filing hundreds of UDRP complaints, clearing thousands of marks, and filing, prosecuting and maintaining tens of thousands of trademark applications and registrations – and created a firm with a collaborative, team-oriented approach.
The firm immediately established an international reputation by scoring significant litigation victories in trademark cases before the courts and the TTAB, counselling on cutting-edge issues for many of the world's leading brands, and being recognized as a leading firm for online enforcement. Kelly IP has been consistently ranked as a top firm nationally for both contentious and non-contentious trademark work by IP Stars and others (e.g., Legal 500, World Trademark Review 1000, Managing Intellectual Property) and has received national awards for both trademark litigation and prosecution. We believe that the following client feedback from a prominent publication best sums up Kelly IP: "What makes its group of all-stars super-competitive is that you receive a world-class service at a significantly reduced rate – you get so much for your money."

Firm overview

Kilpatrick is trusted counsel to the world’s most innovative companies. To serve our groundbreaking clients, we are at the forefront of client service, a leader in DE&I, and on the cutting edge of law and technology. With recognized strength in the technology sector and a full range of service offerings, we deliver practical, business-centric solutions built upon strong and enduring connections.

Firm overview

With 120 trial lawyers across offices in Austin, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Marshall, New York, and Washington, D.C., McKool Smith has established a reputation as one of America’s leading trial firms. The firm has secured 13 nine-figure jury verdicts and 15 eight-figure jury verdicts, obtaining more VerdictSearch and The National Law Journal “Top 100 Verdicts” than any other US law firm. These courtroom successes have earned McKool Smith critical acclaim and helped the firm become what The Wall Street Journal describes as “one of the biggest law firm success stories of the past decade.”

Its Patent Contentious practice comprises more than 60 attorneys representing plaintiffs and defendants against global tech giants including Apple, Google, Amazon, Netflix, Samsung, Meta (Facebook), Tesla, Uber, Microsoft, and many others. Matters involve a broad range of technologies and industries including electronics, semiconductors, software, telecommunications, the internet, FDA-approved drugs and medical devices, chemical engineering and materials science, and media and entertainment.

The firm’s clients includes some of the world’s largest standard essential patent holders (e.g., Nokia and Ericsson), and it specializes in developing strategies to force unwilling licensees to agree to patent licenses on Fair Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) terms. These strategies often including maximizing pressure on unwilling licensees via litigation in multiple jurisdictions and, when appropriate, through injunctions. It also defends standard essential patent holder clients against claims that their licensing practices are abusive and/or that their offered royalty rates are not FRAND. 

In addition to regularly appearing in district courts across the country, the firm has a robust DC practice with extensive experience before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board and the International Trade Commission.