Trademarks and the City

Sorry I haven't posted for a while. I was busy living the fabulous life of a rockstar. By rockstar, I mean law student who has papers, presentations, and other work related responsibilities. But I was able to get some intellectual property networking in New York City done. As a third year law student trying to forge a career in Intellectual Property, it is essential to network. Here is my jam packed day.

I met with my uber cool mentor Ms. Carol Matorin from Limited Brands, Inc. to follow up with an event I did for the law school. I was also lucky enough to meet with Ms. Janet Linn who is a partner over at Morgan Lewis & Bockius. She was so helpful and gave very sharp advice for anyone who is looking to break into intellectual property. One key piece of advice is to make multiple resumes targeted for different types of employers! I met both of these wonderful ladies by doing research on women who do IP in New York. It pays to do your homework and reach out! People are a lot nicer than you think.

I also made a pit stop in Chinatown to see how rampant the counterfeits are right now. It was definitely in full swing. The hottest counterfeits right now are fine jewelry and watches. There were faux Cartiers all over the place! Another hot item to counterfeit has been the enameled jewelry that is done by Louis Vuitton. Here is how the original looks:

I managed to visit my lovely friend Regine Lahens who works over at Marc Jacobs in SoHo. She is definitely a girl that is going places! She and I used to work at Detny Footwear together. She told me that Shane and Shawn Ward (who are the masterminds behind Detny and Shane & Shawn Shoes) opened a cute store in SoHo which was down the street at 238 Mulberry Street so we went to visit them.

Shawn and Shane are just getting better and better in their shoe designs. They made a very chic flat that will have Tory Burch green with envy. It is a satin flat with the words "rock" and "roll" in metal rivets on the front of the shoe. How rockstar is that? Check out both of their lines here:

http://www.detny.com/

I flew out to New York City on Tuesday night to attend the International Trademark Association's Panel Discussion on how to break into a career of Intellectual Property. It was an interesting mix of perspectives with the panelists:

David H. Bernstein, Partner, Debevoise & Plimpton LLP
Rebecca Borden, Vice President, Associate General Counsel, CBS Corporation
Kathryn Starnella, Associate, Goodwin Procter
Tiffany Trunko, Assistant General Counsel - Trademarks, Pfizer Inc

Each of the panelists discussed their career paths and offered some great advice about what they wished they knew coming out of law school. Ms. Rebecca Borden also did a fantastic Powerpoint presentation on what it is she does on a daily basis.

She gave us an example case that she worked on for the CBS hit show Survivor. Ms. Borden important advice about trademarks and fair use. She recommended that the show used a trademark that was distinctive since the word "survivor" is a generic term. Here is how the logo looks:

As you can tell the terms "outwit, outlast, and outplay" are on there. The internal part of the logo is constantly changing to suit the next location of Survivor but the overall look is the same. Ms. Borden's job is to make sure that this logo was not used by anyone else and can be plastered on promotional items such as beachballs, hats, key rings and sunscreen. There were two interesting cases that involved this logo. One was with the Surfvivor Sunscreen being confused with Survivor promotional sunscreen and the other was with the band Survivor. Thanks to Ms. Borden's vigilance about distinctive markers and those extra terms, the logo for CBS remains intact and ready for business.

Ms. Tiffany Trunko gave some key words of advice on how it is wise to gather a team of mentors in order to rally you for your job search. Think of it as your team. Your motto should be "Go Team (insert your name here)! She gave the advice of how clients never want to be surprised and recommended that lawyers to speak in sound bytes in order to be more memorable.

Ms. Karina Dimidjian-Lecompte from Casalonga Avocats was gracious enough to fly out from Paris in order to serve as a moderator for this wonderful panel. The cocktail reception was just delicious! Here is the INTA website if you want to find out more about this organization:

http://www.inta.org/

Student memberships are available. And there is a job bank with cool job postings from places like Abercrombie & Fitch and Nintendo! Good luck with job searching and networking.