Kelly Young

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Kelly Young helps companies build and protect their intellectual property assets worldwide. Kelly counsels clients on all aspects of domestic and international brand management, navigating the entire lifecycle of trademarks from creation and clearance, to filing and registration, and finally to maintenance and enforcement. She manages trademark portfolios of all sizes and advises companies ranging from startups to large multinational corporations on their branding strategy.

View the full bio for Kelly Young at the Faegre Drinker website.

Posts by Kelly Young


Protecting Your Certification Marks with Certainty

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A certification mark is an important business tool.  Displaying a certification mark on a product or on marketing materials indicates that a company’s offerings meet certain standards.  Consumers often look for items that have been tested and found to meet their desired standards, so use of a certification mark can provide businesses with a competitive advantage.

A certification mark doesn’t serve the same function as a source-indicating brand.  Instead of helping companies distinguish their offerings from others, certification marks show consumers that products or services have been “certified” as to a particular quality or characteristic.  For example, a certification mark may appear on food that originated in a specific geographic region or on a household product that contains certain materials.  A certification mark may also be used in connection with services that are provided by members of a union or other organization.

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Tips for developing an efficient worldwide trademark application filing strategy

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So you’re launching a new product line worldwide. Or maybe you’re rebranding a division of your global business. Or perhaps you’ve recently conducted an audit of your trademark portfolio and noticed several gaps in coverage.

Regardless, you’re ready to file new trademark applications around the world ‒ and we’re sure you want to make these filings as efficient and cost-effective as possible.

One way to keep costs down is to take advantage of trademark application filing systems that cover multiple jurisdictions. These systems allow you to register a trademark in more than one country by filing only a single application.

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Trademark Modernization Act of 2020: Part 3

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The new ex parte expungement and reexamination proceedings, introduced by the Trademark Modernization Act, are intended to be efficient ways of removing improper trademark registrations from the register.

But will expungement or reexamination always be the best strategy for challenging a trademark registration?

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Trademark Modernization Act of 2020: Part 1

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The Nuts and Bolts of Expungement and Reexamination

You may remember our blog post here, discussing the Trademark Modernization Act of 2020, which became law at the end of last year.  To implement the Trademark Modernization Act, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has proposed changes to the trademark rules of practice, which we begin to explore in the following post.  Over the coming weeks and months, stay tuned for further commentary, insights and practice tips on these proposed changes!

According to Commissioner for Trademarks David Gooder, during a recent USPTO virtual roundtable event, “protecting the integrity of the US trademark register is, and will remain for some time, one of our top priorities.”  Keeping the register clear of improperly obtained trademark registrations helps ensure that legitimate businesses can register their marks with the USPTO, and enforce those rights against infringers.

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Celebrating One Year of TCAM Today!

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In February 2020, Faegre Baker Daniels and Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP combined to form one of the nation’s 50 largest law firms.  Soon after the combination, Faegre Drinker shifted to a virtual work environment to protect our clients, colleagues and loved ones during the global COVID-19 pandemic.  We nevertheless remained committed to the success of our clients in a challenging year, and focused on serving clients with our new firm’s combined capabilities.

This month marks not only the first year of Faegre Drinker, but also the inaugural year of TCAM Today – Faegre Drinker’s blog covering all things trademark, copyright, advertising and media.  In 2020, Faegre Drinker’s team of more than 30 T-CAM professionals shared their insight on topics ranging from social media influencers to trademark trolls.

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Tips for Transferring Trademarks in Light of COVID-19

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In 2017, we wrote about some of our favorite strategies for updating the ownership of global trademark portfolios. As we continue to support our clients during the pandemic, we’ve developed new strategies for documenting trademark ownership updates outside the U.S. Here, we share a few of these tips.

In this post, we focus on transferring — or assigning — trademark portfolios involving marks in multiple countries. Generally, the transfer of trademark rights from one entity to another must be documented with the trademark office in every country where the assignor owned marks. The requirements for recording a transfer vary by country but often involve submitting newly executed trademark assignment agreements, powers of attorney and other documents. These documents may also need to be notarized or legalized before submission.

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Updates Regarding COVID-19 Impacts on Trademark Operations at the USPTO

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Updated May 29, 2020
[Kelly Horein]

On May 27, 2020, the United States Patent and Trademark Office announced updated measures granting relief for trademark owners impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The deadline extensions that the USPTO announced through previous notices will expire on May 31.

The USPTO will now provide relief on a case-by-case basis for mark owners who have missed certain deadlines as a result of the pandemic. In particular, if mark owners have failed to timely submit responses or fees in connection with Office Actions, or failed to timely meet statutory deadlines, they may file a petition to revive an application or a petition to the director, as appropriate. The petition should explain that the delay in filing or payment was due to the pandemic. For now, if such a statement is included, the USPTO will waive the fees associated with filing the petition.

If the pandemic has interfered with filings with the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, mark owners may make a request or motion, as appropriate, for an extension or reopening of time.

We’ll continue to post updates here. If you have missed a deadline and wish to better understand the steps you can take to continue protecting your trademark rights, please feel free to contact the Faegre Drinker trademark team.

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Don’t Miss Notices from the Canadian Intellectual Property Office regarding Madrid Protocol Trademark Applications

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Wondering why you haven’t received any updates on the progress of your client’s Madrid Protocol application designating Canada?  After reading that question, are you wondering what on earth a Madrid Protocol application is?

Let’s take a step back.  The Madrid system is a mechanism that facilitates the registration of trademarks in multiple jurisdictions around the world.  One way to file trademark applications in multiple jurisdictions is to engage local counsel in each jurisdiction of interest and work with counsel to file individual applications.  By using the Madrid system, however, a trademark owner can file a single international trademark application with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and designate one or more jurisdictions based on just this one application.

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Be on the Lookout for Potentially Misleading Trademark Solicitations

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If you own a U.S. trademark registration, chances are you’ve received official-looking solicitations offering to handle trademark services on your behalf in return for a fee. Read these notices carefully – more often than not, they don’t come from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Instead, they’re sent by private companies that have obtained your contact information from the publicly accessible USPTO trademark database. Worse than that, these notices may ask trademark owners to pay thousands of dollars in fees in exchange for services that aren’t even timely or necessary.

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To Claim or Not to Claim … Seniority (Guest Post from EU Firm Cleveland Scott York)

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Businesses operating in the European Union may be familiar with the concept of “seniority.”  By claiming seniority, an owner of an EU trademark registration may be able to claim prior rights based on existing national trademark registrations in EU member countries.  To illustrate when a business might claim seniority, take the following example:

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