My Trademark Transactions LLM course started a new semester a John Marshall Law School in Chicago tonight.
In our introduction, we discussed three guiding principles for taking the role of trademark counsel to a higher level. These principles no doubt apply to any business lawyer.
1. Understand the business model. Trademark lawyers need to do this to provide meaningful opinions.
2. Find ways to increase value. Trademark lawyers have may opportunties to guide the company to select and build strong brands.
3. Find ways to improve the bottom line. What strategies to you have to help reduce expense? What can you do to help bring in more revenue.
During the course, we will apply these principles to a variety of subjects, always looking for ways that trademark lawyers can provide more valuable service to their clients.
Among the topics to cover are: searching and clearance, applications and registration, assignments, consents, licensing, corporate transactions, holding companies, taxation, security interests, valuation, insurance, opinion letters, use guidelines, audits and strategic planning.
Next week we will cover searching and clearance, with special attentions to the case International Star Class yacht Racing Association v. Tommy Hilfiger, U.S.A., Inc., 80 F.3d 749 (2d Cir. 1996) and 146 F.3d 66 (2d Cir. 1998).
