Services

Dispute Resolution

The bread and butter of our practice is helping businesses resolve their copyright, trademark, and design patent disputes quickly, quietly, and affordably.

PRE-LITIGATION

If you receive a demand letter or a cease and desist letter accusing you of intellectual property infringement, you need to evaluate the merits of the claim taking into consideration your business goals. We can help you evaluate the claim, explore your defenses, and help you resolve the dispute before it escalates to legal action against you. Resolving outstanding issues helps you focus on your business.

LITIGATION

We routinely defend sellers accused of trademark, copyright, or design patent infringement in federal courts around the country. Casey is admitted to practice in the District Courts for the Southern District of New York (SDNY), the Northern District of Illinois (NDIL), and the District of New Hampshire (DNH). If you received notice that a Complaint or TRO has been filed against you, we can help.

TEMPORARY RESTRAINING ORDERS

Have you been informed by a marketplace that someone has obtained a Temporary Restraining Order against you that authorizes the marketplace to withhold your funds or inventory? This is a serious legal issue and you should retain legal counsel to advise you on the claims and their merits and help you negotiate a resolution (or prepare a formal response) to clear your name and have the TRO dismissed. Failing to response to a Complaint can result in a default judgment being entered against you.

ARBITRATION

Online marketplaces like Amazon, Walmart, and eBay require sellers to arbitrate most disputes that arise in connection with marketplace sales. We represent sellers making claims against marketplaces for violations of the seller agreement, account suspensions, ASIN suspensions, and the unlawful freeze or withholding of seller funds. If you are contemplating legal action against a marketplace, we can help. We are often able to resolve these disputes without actually filing for formal arbitration.

IP Enforcement

When your product or design becomes popular, unscrupulous manufacturers may create identical or near identical copies of your product without regard for your intellectual property rights.

We advise brands and artists on how to protect and enforce their intellectual property rights. We help brands monitor marketplaces for counterfeit and replica goods and report confirmed infringements. We have helped our clients report illegal counterfeiting to law enforcement sources as well. As a last resort, we have also filed lawsuits in Federal Court on behalf of artists and manufacturers regarding the sale of pirated products online.

Marketplace Enforcement & Defense

Whether you are a new reseller or an established brand, we can help you understand the rules of various marketplaces, establish best practices, and guide you through any disputes or contemplated litigation related to your sale of products online.

Amazon Brand REgistry

Amazon’s Brand Registry program allows trademark owners to manage their brand presence on Amazon through a central portal. We can help you get set up and learn how to monitor your listings for counterfeit products and malicious actors. We can also help you understand how to file complaints of infringement through Amazon’s IP Reporting system.

Complaint evaluation

Do you think another product is infringing on your design patent or copyrighted design? We can evaluate the products and give you our opinion on whether a marketplace complaint or other legal action would be successful. We also help our brand clients track market competitors and monitor for infringing products and designs.

Infringement reporting

We help artists and brands monitor online markets for products that infringe on their intellectual property rights and report those infringements to Amazon and other marketplaces. Counterfeit and knock-off products that infringe on your design rights can take away from your market share and harm your goodwill when customers receive inferior products. We help our clients develop an escalated enforcement strategy to protect and enforce their trademarks, copyrights, and design patents against infringers.

Responding to complaints on AMazon

Sellers on the Amazon marketplace face many different types of complaints: complaints from customers, complaints from IP owners, complaints from Amazon itself. Many of these complaints involve sophisticated legal issues like intellectual property and product liability. We help sellers evaluate the complaints they receive and develop a plan to respond. We contact rights owners on behalf of sellers, appeal certain complaints to Amazon directly, develop plans of action when necessary, and generally help sellers keep their accounts healthy.

DMCA Complaints

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) revolutionized the way copyright infringement is handled online. If someone is infringing on your copyright by hosting or distributing unauthorized content, you can report them to the web host and the host will remove the content. On the other hand, if you are falsely accused of hosting or distributing infringing content, you can shift the burden and file a Counter Notice to formally dispute the claims made against you. We advise content creators on the DMCA process and defend people accused of infringement regularly.