United States (National)

Firm overview

We’re proud to work with some of the world’s most dynamic organizations and the leaders who drive them. We know that on any given day you’re tackling competition, corporate development, asset protection, talent management—some days all of the above. While there’s a bevy of smart folks out there to help you address them on a case-by-case basis, there are few who have the breadth and depth of focused knowledge to help you attend to them all and stay ahead of what’s next.

That’s McDermott.

When you hire us, you don’t just get the experience of an individual. You get a purpose-built, tightly woven network of legal thought leaders who marry their passion for business with a deep, focused understanding of the law.

And your team isn’t just the lawyers working on your business day one. It’s also their colleagues around the world who guide and advise around the edges—the ones who add diverse, nuanced perspectives to elevate strategy and surface highly effective—but often unexpected—solutions when a “simple” transaction becomes a bet-the-company deal or a basic arbitration turns into multi-year litigation.

We don’t just promote this approach—we thrive on it. We know that it’s our ability to tap into the particular knowledge of our individual lawyers and then to harness their collective experience that makes us uniquely qualified to help our clients move faster and propel their success.

You can see it the results we deliver and you’ll feel it when you meet with us to talk about your needs. You’ll know that we’re more than “just” lawyers. We’re scientists, accountants, analysts, policy makers, money managers and family members who love the law. We bring all of those experiences to bear for your business and the people you serve.

Most importantly, we’re committed to helping you make real progress against your goals—to turning those big ideas into actionable plans—and to making it as easy and enjoyable as possible.

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

At Fross Zelnick, we secure and defend our clients’ most valuable assets—their brands, designs, and content. 

• Our trademark practice is unmatched. After five decades, we’ve developed a singular trademark practice serving clients in the United States and around the world. We’ve handled every type of trademark issue and dispute, multiple times for multiple companies in multiple jurisdictions, from the simplest registration to the thorniest cross-jurisdictional enforcement action. 

• We boast top-tier copyright experience, with a special emphasis on defending creative works, including character rights, branding assets, and product design. For decades we’ve assisted clients as they navigate the consequences of new technological frontiers – most recently, digital, and virtual performance rights and blockchain-based technologies. 

• Our patent practice focuses exclusively on design patents, with particular expertise in developing multi-pronged strategies combining patent, trademark, and copyright law to protect our clients’ prized works. 

The breadth and depth of our practice has attracted a wide range of clients, from celebrated brands, industry leaders, and renowned content providers to disruptive startups and regional companies, all of whom rely on us to protect their unique properties at home and around the world. Many of the largest corporate law firms rely on our advice for unique or hard-to-handle U.S. and international issues. 

Our capabilities include: 

Top-Tier IP Litigation

We are a renowned trademark and copyright litigation firm, with a reputation for both aggressive advocacy in court and quick, favorable settlements out of court. We know how to fight and win—whether in our backyard or in the most intractable foreign jurisdictions.

Strategic and Nuanced Registration Strategies

We register trademarks, copyrights, and design patents with our clients’ business goals in mind. Our cross-discipline expertise means we leverage multiple legal strategies to shore up strong protections for the most hard-to-defend assets. We obtain rights that ward off newcomers and stand up in court. We are one of the most prolific filers of U.S. trademark applications, and our expertise in the finer points of U.S. trademark prosecution is second to none.

Global Portfolio Management

With our unparalleled in-house knowledge of international IP law, we provide unrivaled advice for global portfolio management, litigations, and transactions around the globe. Our dynamic, carefully selected network of foreign counsel helps us guide U.S. and foreign clients alike as they identify, protect, and defend their rights under copyright, trademark, trade dress, design patent, domain name, and related laws worldwide. Our international capabilities are just as robust as our local prowess.

Deal Expertise

Whether a client is buying or selling an entire business or a portion of an intellectual property portfolio, we’ve seen it before - and can advise on how to structure the deal to fit the client’s goals. We conduct due diligence reviews for mergers, acquisitions, and other corporate ventures, and formulate efficient worldwide strategies to record the corporate changes against their clients’ IP registrations. Many of the country’s premier M&A attorneys partner with us on the IP components of larger transactions.

Services on the Cutting Edge

Thanks to our more than 50-year legacy, we’ve been witness to the birth and evolution of nearly every technology that’s central to the modern economy. From in-the-trenches Uniform Dispute Resolution Proceeding litigations against cybersquatters, to the rapidly changing intersection of IP rights and blockchain innovations like NFTs, to educating trademark offices around the world on new technological intersections, we’re helping clients successfully steer through uncharted waters and prepare for what’s to come.

Protection of Celebrities and Cherished Characters

From Batman to Harry Potter, we protect famous characters through sophisticated copyright and trademark protection strategies and enforcement against infringers. We’ve also retrieved numerous infringing trademarks and domain names for celebrities and litigate high-profile, right-of-publicity cases involving the unauthorized use of well-known names and likenesses, all within a quickly evolving legal landscape.

Combating Counterfeiting

We’ve developed sophisticated and cost-effective enforcement programs for preventing the importation, sale, and distribution of infringing or counterfeit products. Our experience is capacious, including apparel, footwear, cosmetics, jewelry, and luxury goods products. Included in these programs is the recordal of relevant intellectual property rights with Customs in the United States and abroad.

Firm overview

Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP is a premier firm of more than 1,000 lawyers with diverse backgrounds, personalities, ideas and interests who provide innovative and effective solutions to our clients’ most complex legal and business challenges. With 11 offices across North America, Europe and Asia, and a robust international network, the firm represents many of the world’s largest and most important asset managers, public and private corporations, and financial institutions, as well as clients in need of pro bono assistance. We consistently earn high praise for our collaborative, commercial approach, providing novel and efficient solutions to otherwise intractable situations.

The firm is widely recognized as having market-leading practices in private equity, public company M&A, litigation, white collar and regulatory defense, and restructuring. Within these broad practices, we also offer numerous elite specialized practices, including finance, capital markets, investment funds, antitrust, tax and executive compensation, among others.

Litigation:

No other law firm can approach Paul, Weiss’s experience and record of success in the most complex, high-stakes litigation in U.S. federal and state courts. Our renowned trial team is a particularly powerful advantage, both in the courtroom and at the settlement table.

With a deep bench that includes many of the country’s most accomplished trial lawyers and former senior government officials, our Litigation Department is uniquely positioned to handle multifaceted crises, from sprawling cross-border, multi-regulator enforcement actions to parallel private litigation. We are regularly entrusted with fast-moving, franchise-threatening matters because of our ability to develop and execute a winning strategy, no matter the problem or adversary, and to see the matter through to the ultimate resolution, whether at trial or before the Supreme Court.

The Litigation Department includes dozens of former federal prosecutors and senior U.S. government officials, including a former U.S. Attorney General; former U.S. Attorneys for the Eastern District of New York and the Northern District of California; a former Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security; former senior leaders in the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division; numerous senior counsel from the SEC, the CFPB, the FTC and other key U.S. regulatory agencies; and former senior members of the White House Counsel’s office.

White Collar & Regulatory Defense:

Clients facing white collar and regulatory enforcement challenges look to Paul, Weiss to protect their businesses and reputations and manage the behind-the-scenes interplay among competing regulatory and enforcement agencies. We have experience handling a vast range of regulatory and enforcement inquiries and internal investigations, including involving multiple jurisdictions. Our lawyers are adept at conducting internal investigations on behalf of companies, boards, audit committees and special litigation committees. Within the litigation and white collar and regulatory defense practices, we are widely recognized for our expertise in many specialized areas, including:

• Antitrust
• Anti-Corruption & Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
• Anti-Money Laundering
• Artificial Intelligence
• Bankruptcy Litigation
• Congressional Investigations
• Crisis Management
• Cryptocurrency & Blockchain
• Cybersecurity & Data Protection
• DEI Strategic Advisory
• Digital Technology
• E-Discovery
• Employment, Workplace Investigations & Trade Secrets
• ERISA, Pension & Benefits Litigation
• False Claims Act & Qui Tam Litigation
• Financial Services Litigation & Investigations
• Insurance Litigation
• Intellectual Property Litigation
• Internal Investigations
• International Arbitration
• Investigations
• Investment Management Litigation
• Mergers & Acquisitions Litigation
• National Security, CFIUS & FARA
• Product Liability & Mass Torts
• Civil Rights & Racial Equity Audits
• Sanctions
• Securities Litigation
• Supreme Court & Appellate Litigation
• Sustainability & ESG Advisory