Build
Your Brands create value worldwide and enable your company to standout against the competition. Your Brands are often your most important IP assets. Trademarks and Domain Names protect brands on the web and at the storefront.
Knowing your brands’ Trademark & Domain Names strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and positioning across your markets – your globe – is the first step in effective IP wall building.
Effective Trademark & Domain Name walls protect a client’s unique brands in key markets, both on-line and traditional. Trademark & domain name audits consider the scope and breadth of the legal protections for your brands by examining, for example:
- Which goods/services are used with a brand?
- Which brands have trademarks and domains registered?
- Do the marks/domain cover the goods/services?
- Where are your trademarks registered?
- Is ownership of the marks/domains properly recorded?
- Are there any unnecessary disclaimers?
- Have Section 15 (incontestability) declarations been filed?
Answers to these, and similar questions, can be critical to your success. A WPIP Trademark Audit enables our clients to assess, know and build Efficient, Effective and Responsive Trademark & Domain Name Walls.
Trademark and Domain Name Strategies build on the knowledge gained from audits to develop goals, approaches, strategies, and budgets for desired legal brand protections
IP Audits + WPIP Brand Strategies = Smart Business
A Great Brand is Often Supreme Across the Land.
But, great brands require great legal protections. Others will seek to capitalize upon and diminish your brand presence. Defenses against knock-offs, grey-market goods, and other threats begin with robust trademark and domain name procurement and management.
WPIP’s recommended approach to Brand Management is simple:
- Build in Breadth
- Build in Depth
WPIP’s Brand Management services include:
- Trademark and Brand Clearance Searching
- Registering Trademarks
- Registering Domain Names
We believe a robust, often worldwide, portfolio of trademarks and domain names can be efficiently achieved, even with tight budgets. WPIP’s low cost structure + experience enables our clients to often obtain more legal protections, at less cost. To further these advantages, WPIP offers its Multi-Brick Discount Program™ – enabling our clients to pursue broad and deep trademark and domain name walls efficiently.
Broad & Deep IP Walls = Smart Business
Defend
Don’t let your Brands’ Protections Crumble!
In the context of Trademark and Domain Name Walls, no better advice can be found. At WPIP our Brand Enforcement and Defense services include: [1]
Watching and monitoring services- Cease & Desist letter campaigns
- Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) proceedings
- IP litigation
- Opposition and Cancellation Proceedings
[1] One or more of these services may be provided in conjunction with 3rd party trial counsel.
Navigate
In the context of Patent and Trademark Walls, no better advice can be found.
Whether you are seeking to develop a new product or service or improve an existing one, patent and trademark walls can and should be cleared. The failure to clear known or reasonably identifiable patent walls may result in enhanced damages being awarded, especially if an infringers conduct is deemed to be egregious.
At WPIP, we help our clients clear patent and trademark walls by conducting, 
often with the assistance of third party search firms, patent clearance searches. Based on the results found by such searches, we advise clients on avoidance and, if necessary, design around options. In many cases, and especially those where patent avoidance may be difficult or design around impractical, walls may be cleared by timely opinions on the validity and/or enforceability of a patent of concern.
“The go-between wears out a thousand sandals.” Japanese Proverb
At WPIP, we advise our clients to approach patent and trademark license negotiations as if one were preparing for a marathon. In our experience, unless trivial amounts are at issue, negotiations require preparation and persistence.
First, the client should know what is at stake. Is it millions of dollars, the continuation of a product or service, a brand identity? Or is it something that can be easily discarded?
Second, what leverage can the client bring to the negotiating table? What are the relative strengths, weaknesses and defenses? What are the possible counter-claims?
Third, clients should be willing to walk-away. A bad deal is often worse than a litigation.
Last, some give and some take must be expected if a deal is ever to be done. Given that most patent and trademark matters are settled short of trial, the end-game / the end-result acceptable to the client should be known as early in the dispute as is possible. Whether your strategy is to fight to the end, or seek to minimize corporate disruptions for as little pain as possible, knowing your approach at an early stage of the dispute is often highly advantageous. It will inform your preparation and response options.
At WPIP, we have led licensing negotiations and provided legal counsel and support in numerous patent and trademark assertions.
“Diligence is the mother of good luck.” Benjamin Franklin
As Benjamin Franklin so aptly noted, successful mergers and acquisitions (M&A) do not arise from luck, but from diligence.
At WPIP, we have years of examining the IP portfolios of target companies. Based on this learned experience, our recommended approach involves three steps.
First, determine what diligence is “due.” Is the IP of the target acquisition a “must-have”, is acquiring the IP the driving force for the transaction? Or, is the IP perhaps a perceived liability that can be avoided through an acquisition? The basis for the transaction and the role the IP provides in such transaction should inform the scope and resources utilized to provide the diligence.
Second, once the diligence due is known, commensurate therewith fact investigation should occur. The fact investigation may range from clearance (e.g., freedom-to-operate and design-around), to validity, enforceability, ownership, scope and other considerations.
Third, an analysis of the facts uncovered should be provided. Such analysis may involve SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunity and threats) or simple risks and benefits analysis.
Last, a due diligence investigation should empower the acquiring party, assuming a transaction is completed, to have a checklist and knowledge of the assets going forward. This knowledge can further and enhance the client’ goal of building efficient, effective and responsive IP walls.