Mary Hallerman focuses her practice on trademark, trade dress, unfair competition, false advertising, and copyright litigation, enforcement, and counseling. She regularly represents clients in federal trial and appellate courts throughout the United States and before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) of the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, as well as in domain name disputes before the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and similar fora.
In the past decade, Mary has gained substantial experience in key issues encountered in Lanham Act and copyright litigation, including priority, ownership, likelihood of confusion (forward, reverse, and initial interest), acquired distinctiveness or secondary meaning, genericness, surveys (confusion, fame, genericness, false advertising), trademark counterfeiting, uncontrolled licensing, holdover franchisees, functionality of trade dress, gray goods, cybersquatting, keyword advertising and search engine optimization, copyrightability, preemption, open source software, and damages and injunctive relief.
The World Trademark Review recently recognized Mary’s “faculty for guiding case strategy and management.” She regularly develops and implements discovery strategies, takes and defends depositions, works with expert witnesses, prepares and argues dispositive motions, and leads trial and evidentiary hearing preparation. Mary also has significant appellate experience, having represented clients in trademark, trade dress, false advertising, and copyright appeals before five different courts of appeal and the Supreme Court of the United States.
In addition to her litigation practice, Mary regularly works with clients in managing trademark and domain name portfolios, takedowns of infringing content, assessing litigation risks, trademark selection and clearance, reviewing advertising, marketing, and packaging, and assisting in the intellectual property aspects of corporate transactions.
Mary also regularly serves as local counsel in the “Rocket Docket” of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, where she served as a law clerk for the Honorable Claude M. Hilton and interned for the Honorable Henry E. Hudson. She has experience in all four divisions of that court, having represented clients in more than 20 cases involving intellectual property, antitrust, and other commercial disputes.
