What We Do

Why Choose Us

Counterfeit products and gray market goods not only diminish your company’s sales and reduce your revenues, but they also damage your brand and reputation. These goods can be difficult for your customers to detect and can be even harder to eliminate. That’s where Ulmer’s experienced intellectual property attorneys can help. We work to stop the flow of these counterfeit goods and defend the value of your products. By helping you identify and stamp out key offenders, we help you attain worldwide brand protection for your business.

Our enforcement efforts combine a mix of litigation and other alternatives to halt the sale, distribution, and importation of counterfeit products and gray market goods throughout the world. We leverage our broad network of international contacts, and we work with investigators and various customs offices to find the source of offending goods and identify these products at ports of entry across the globe. We act swiftly to enforce your valuable IP rights and stop the flow of counterfeit products.

Who We Assist

Our attorneys represent a wide range of trademark, copyright, and patent owners across numerous industries, including domestic and international manufacturers of consumer products, a leading tool and welding equipment company, and a major toy company.

What We Do

We use a broad-based approach in halting the sale of counterfeit products and gray market goods, customizing cost-effective programs for our clients to secure and enforce their IP rights on a global scale. To enforce your IP rights, we offer a comprehensive range of services, including but not limited to:

• Working with customs officials around the world to prevent the importation of counterfeit goods, including authorizing seizures and destruction of counterfeit goods. We have implemented customs enforcement programs in the United States, the EU, China, Russia, and elsewhere. This includes, for example, recording your trademarks with various customs offices and working with customs officials to teach them how to differentiate between authentic and counterfeit goods.
• Engaging foreign counsel and investigators to uncover the source of counterfeit goods, and then take whatever steps are necessary to shut down the counterfeit operations. Our extensive contacts with foreign counsel ensure that no matter where our clients encounter counterfeits, we are ready to act quickly, efficiently, and effectively.
• Coordinating with the International Trade Commission to stop the importation of gray market goods.
• Working with worldwide government authorities to conduct raids of counterfeit operations, and liaise with such authorities in subsequent criminal prosecutions. For example, we have worked with government officials in China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Mexico, Colombia, and the European Union to bring criminal actions against counterfeiters on behalf of our clients.
• Monitoring various third-party websites where counterfeit and gray market goods might be sold, and making takedown demands to remove sales offerings of such goods. For example, we have submitted numerous takedown requests to websites such as Amazon, eBay, Alibaba, and Mercado Libre. We have also stopped third parties from hijacking our clients’ listings on Amazon.
• Litigating the sale of counterfeit products under the Trademark Counterfeiting Act of 1984 and the Anticounterfeiting Consumer Protection Act of 1996.
• Pursuing various remedies for victims of counterfeit operations, including injunctive relief to immediately stop the sales of counterfeit goods and monetary relief, such as damages, statutory damages, disgorgement of counterfeiters’ profits, litigation costs and attorneys’ fees, and even treble damages.