Trademarks

Snell & Wilmer is home to one of the premier trademark practices in the United States. We manage approximately 11,000 registered and pending U.S. and international trademarks for our clients in a broad array of industries such as food and beverage, sporting goods, software, apparel and footwear, automobiles, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, audio equipment, medical devices and dental products, hotels and resorts services, assisted living, lawncare services, electronic devices and wireless products.

Snell & Wilmer’s trademark team advises clients on how to best protect their intellectual property and avoid intellectual property liability and infringement while providing a superior level of service in a professionally supportive environment. Our trademark attorneys have extensive knowledge of our clients’ businesses, issues and concerns, and we are equipped and prepared to assist in an efficient manner. We work hard and work smart for our clients, of course. But we do more. We apply lessons from individual litigation matters to help optimize business outcomes generally, in future litigation matters, and sometimes even in litigation avoidance.

Further, our attorneys are experienced in protecting and enforcing trademark rights online. We advise clients on issues of infringement on webpages, social media and in domain names. In that regard, we are experienced in seeking recovery and suspension of domain names though the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP), Universal Rapid Suspension (URS) procedures, and other rights protection mechanisms available to trademark owners. Our lawyers are also versed in internet governance issues and are active within ICANN.

Snell & Wilmer’s trademark attorneys have been recognized in national legal rankings such as World Trademark Review, Legal 500, Super Lawyers^®, The Best Lawyers in America^©, U.S. News Media Group, Best Lawyers^®, and Managing Intellectual Property. Our lawyers participate in a variety of professional organizations including various sections of the International Trademark Association (INTA), American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA), American Bar Association (ABA) and others, and teach at the university level as well.

When litigation is required, our trademark and unfair competition litigation team manages cases in court and in U.S. and foreign trademark offices.

Areas of Service

Services the group regularly provides for our clients include:

Trademark Counseling and Clearance

Trademark budget development
Training of marketing personnel on proper brand usage
Developing brand usage guidelines
Knockout searches
Comprehensive searches
Written or verbal opinions regarding use and registrability

Trademark Procurement and Prosecution – Our group files thousands of trademark applications annually.

Developing global trademark filing strategies
Preparing and filing trademark applications
Responding to office actions
Ex parte appeals from application refusals

Trademark Maintenance and Monetization – Our team oversees and manages more than 11,000 trademarks.

Global IP docketing
Filing and prosecution of post-registration documents
Recording trademark registrations with customs
Managing worldwide trademark portfolios
Trademark audits to assess gaps in portfolio and to prevent perpetuating renewals for marks no longer in use
Recordation of assignments, address changes, name changes and correcting/perfecting title of ownership of IP assets
IP licensing

Transactional – Our team is regularly involved in corporate transactions involving trademarks.