EVENT OF INTEREST: UC DAVIS SCHOOL OF LAW BRAND LAW SYMPOSIUM - October 4-5

UC Davis Law Review Symposium's BRAND NEW WORLD event is being offered for free to practitioners, is sponsored by Google, and is an event featuring many great minds on both the legal and business side of brand development and protection.  

You can RSVP here.


For those practitioners taking notice, brands are quickly matching if not surpassing patents as a company's most important and valuable intellectual property asset.  When companies such as Google and Apple have trademarks valued in the billions, and when domain names sell for millions, it is quickly becoming apparent intellectual property attorney's roles in the all stages of brand development and protection is based on the changing landscape of both intellectual property law and of business, promotion and commerce itself.  

The UC Davis Law website offers the following information about the much anticipated and increasingly relevant and timely event:

"UC Davis Law Review invites you to attend its 2012-2013 symposium, "Brand New World: Distinguishing Oneself in the Global Flow." The conference, sponsored by Google, will discuss one of the most important issues in society and modern commerce: the role of brands in our lives. 

Two dozen of the world’s top scholars of trademarks and brands, from Cambridge, Oxford, NYU, Stanford, Princeton, Hong Kong, the Max Plancke Institute, and the London School of Economics, will discuss the future of brands and trademark law."

As a firm who has based its own brand on the increasingly important role of IP attorneys in the development and protection of brands, Brand Ventures IP Law will be there to learn, network, and show our support for a subtle yet significant shift in the practice of IP law.  

We hope to see you there, and for those not able to make it, or for those who we presently represent or will in the future, it is the continuing exposure to the ideas being discussed at these events which we believe will help us become better positioned to share and utilize innovative new strategies and to embrace changes in the practice of intellectual property law so that  we will better qualified to protect the brands that we work hard with you to develop.  

USPTO Video No. 4: Applicant Information

This part of the Trademark Application process often strikes both 

novice Applicants and seasoned IP attorneys as the most simple part of the 

application; however, it never surprises me how often I hear of refusals resulting 

from the information requested in this section of the application. 

For help with a U.S. Trademark Application or a subsequent Office Action,

feel free to contact Brand Ventures IP for a FREE CONSULTATION.

USPTO Video Series #3: Trademark Clearance Searches

The information contained in this video is introductory, but nonetheless, important for every practitioner  

or potential trademark filer to know.  If you have remaining questions in regards to trademark searches 

and conflict determinations, this video can be a helpful refresher or educational on a new area of law.  

Enjoy and if you have any additional questions on this area of law, feel free to email Brand Ventures 

IP Law at info@bviplaw.com and we'll try to reply to every inquiry as soon as possible.

The Brooklyn Nets and Rebranding A Sports Team: How Players Personal Brands Impact the Rebranding of an Entire Franchise

New City, New Owner, New Arena, New Logo, even "New Jerseys". Over the past year, much has been made over one of the largest public rebranding efforts to impact American sports in decades. Attempting to make the most of a move to a city that is home to its own recent notable rebranding efforts, the New Jersey Nets have done much to capture the publics imagination with its move to Brooklyn and have made it clear that this team will be new in almost every way. 

Starting with the purchase of the team by Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov over two years ago, a brash new style of ownership commenced with selling the message that the move to Brooklyn would not be simply a relocation of the team but a complete rebranding of the Nets as an NBA franchise. The Nets have benefitted from their popular association with minority owner Jay-Z, the generous financing for their Arena by Barclays Bank, and their change to a new team logo which may reflect the only aspect of the move to Brooklyn that could be described as "minimalist". 

While all of these factors bode well for the teams future success in Brooklyn, one important point stands out when it comes to rebranding a sports team, that your team brand is only as strong as the brand of those players on your opening day roster. Cue to Dwightmare (a trademark not liklely sought out by Orlando's Dwight Howard) 2012, and you can see how much star power, particluarly in the NBA, means to the brand of a team. The Nets, realizing that to add a star of D12's stature, they would have to retain a player of Deron William's stature, did what was necessary to bring back the Texas native whose eye had been wandering towards his hometown Dallas Mavericks since the Free Agency period began.  

In order to keep Deron Williams, and thus further their efforts to land Dwight Howard, the Nets knew they had to add an attractive piece to the roster. With most teams holding onto their franchise superstars for dear life, one player was notably very available, Joe Johnson of the Atlanta Hawks. The currrent owner of the most head-scratching contract in the NBA, a contract that exceeds those of Lebron James, Dwayne Wade and Carmelo Anthony, Joe Johnson was widely thought to be significantly overpaid based on his Tier 2 talents, lack of star power, and his lack of connection with Atlanta fans. To Atlanta, he was expendable and his trade necessary in order to start their own rebuilding process, to New Jersey, he was the player who could help keep the player that would land the player the Nets truly wanted on their opening day roster.  

In an era of the "Big Three" in the NBA, where in order to compete or be attractive to available players, a team must have a trio of stars-super stars on their team, the Nets made the trade for Joe Johnson, and although not their preferred player of choice, he was instrumental in working out an extension for Deron Williams. Without Deron Williams, the Nets would have opened their new arena with a roster largely seen as a disappointment. So while the analysts can argue the finer points of the competitiveness of the Nets roster, the teams rebranding efforts should be viewed as a success.  However, without landing those first two star pieces, and keeping hope alive to land D12 sometime over the next year, the new arena and those new uniforms would have, on opening day, felt otherwise quite empty.  For more, a NY Times recent article  and a LA Times article on the Brooklyn Net's rebranding efforts.