Brand & IP
Most brands your size have a registration. Fewer have a portfolio. The difference shows up the first time you try to enforce, or the first time a retailer asks for proof of rights.
You are running twenty-some SKUs against a registration written for four.
It was filed for one mark, in one class, covering the products you sold at the time. Since then you launched into two new categories, refreshed the logo, added a sub-brand, signed a licensing deal, and started shipping into Canada.We work at the front of that. Claims get reviewed before packaging goes to print.
The gap surfaces in three places, always at the worst moment. When you try to enforce and find that you cannot. When a retailer asks for proof of rights before a listing. When an acquirer's counsel opens the IP schedule and asks why the assignment was never recorded.
Real Industry Insight
Two things go wrong most often in this category, and neither is exotic.
The first is a goods description written narrowly to clear the Office quickly, which three years later does not cover the products you actually sell. Every SKU that falls outside it is a SKU you cannot defend.
The second is chain of title. The mark was filed under a prior entity, or by a co-founder personally, or before the conversion, and the assignment was never recorded with the USPTO. Nobody notices until diligence.
Both are cheap to fix on a Tuesday and expensive to fix when a term sheet is out.
What We Handle
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Portfolio structure built around where the line is going, clearance before you commit to a category, and chain of title kept clean as the company changes shape.
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Federal applications with a goods description written for the SKU count you will have in three years, not the one you have today.
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Filing surveillance, marketplace monitoring, and the judgment about which conflicts are worth a response and which are noise.
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Formula protection, the agreements and internal controls that make trade secret status defensible, and what happens when a formulator leaves for a competitor.
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Registration of photography, packaging art, and campaign assets, plus the work-for-hire terms that decide whether you own what your agency made.
This is one function of an in-house legal department.
Our clients engage us across several.
