Trademarks

Your small business is a party to a New York Civil Litigation lawsuit. How can you protect yourself?

by Fred Abramson

You are sit­ting in your office on the busiest day of the year, and just when you think noth­ing else could go wrong, a per­son walks in and utters the fate­ful words “You’ve been served”, while hand­ing you a stack of papers.   Your busi­ness is a party to a New York civil lit­i­ga­tion law­suit. Your busi­ness has  just been sued.  What is the best course of action you can take, and how can you pro­tect your­self as well as your business?

Your small business is a party to a New York Civil Litigation lawsuit. How can you protect yourself?

Who?

Read the papers that are given to you to find out the party that is suing you and the type of civil lit­i­ga­tion you are involved in.  Is it a cor­po­ra­tion, a part­ner­ship, or an indi­vid­ual?  Are they a cus­tomer or a sup­plier of your busi­ness? Who is the lawyer rep­re­sent­ing the party that is suing you?  This infor­ma­tion will help your attor­ney obtain a more favor­able result for you by research­ing the other party and its coun­sel. (Do they set­tle often?  Are they a big com­pany?  What are their finan­cial resources?  Do they have a rep­u­ta­tion to main­tain and there­fore may want to set­tle quickly?).

What?

What exactly are you being sued about?  Is it a breach of con­tract claim? Is it a non-payment claim, or a non-performance claim?  Those are many rea­sons why a busi­ness may be sued.

When?

In Civil Lit­i­ga­tion, tim­ing is crit­i­cal in a law­suit.  Responses must be filed within a set period, which in New York is  usu­ally within 30 days.  While an exten­sion can be granted, don’t wait until the last minute to con­tact your attor­ney.  It takes time to pre­pare an appro­pri­ate answer to the papers.  If you do not respond in a timely fash­ion, you will be con­sid­ered in default, and a judg­ment may be taken against you.  This means you may lose the case with­out the oppor­tu­nity to pro­vide a defense.

Also, don’t assume you are judg­ment proof, because judg­ments can be col­lected from future earn­ings as well as assets.  In addi­tion, do not assume that your insur­ance cov­ers every­thing, although it may be wise to notify your insur­ance car­rier as well as your attorney.

Where?

What court are you being sued in?   What county?  State or Fed­eral Court? You may be sued in a state far away if, for instance, you have done busi­ness in that state.  In that case, your New York attor­ney will have to obtain local coun­sel for your small busi­ness in the other state, and this takes time.

Why?

Why did the party resort to a law­suit?  Is it some­thing you can fix by hav­ing your attor­ney talk to the other side and nego­ti­ate a set­tle­ment?  Is there a run­ning ani­mos­ity between your com­pany and the other party, in which case set­tle­ment will be dif­fi­cult?  Do you need to file a coun­ter­claim against the other party?

How?

Imme­di­ately notify and sup­ply the civil lit­i­ga­tion  law­suit papers to your attor­ney.  Make sure you retain a pho­to­copy for your­self.  Inform your attor­ney of all the facts rel­e­vant to the case.  Your attor­ney will decide what is impor­tant and what is not.


Orga­nize your doc­u­ments per­tain­ing to the case so that you can min­i­mize the time the attor­ney must spend going through them.  This will save your attor­ney ’s time, and there­fore save you legal fees.  Do not talk to the other party’s attor­ney.  He works for the other party, just as your attor­ney works for you.  Let your attor­ney do this for you.  In addi­tion, remem­ber that in law, just as in any pro­fes­sion or busi­ness, there are rules and pro­ce­dures  your attor­ney knows and you may not.  To stay out of trou­ble, leave the legal work to your attorney.

A trial can take sev­eral weeks in New York, includ­ing prepa­ra­tion time.  There­fore, it may be in your best inter­est in cer­tain cases to set­tle.  How­ever, be real­is­tic in your set­tle­ment expectations.

Con­clu­sion

Hav­ing an ongo­ing attorney-client rela­tion­ship will help pro­tect you in the event of a civil lit­i­ga­tion law­suit.  The more your attor­ney knows about your busi­ness, the bet­ter the attor­ney will be able to help you.  In addi­tion, dis­cussing busi­ness options and prob­lems with your attor­ney ahead of time could help pre­vent a law­suit from ever start­ing.  Either way, it will save you money in the long run.

Please be advised that the above is for infor­ma­tional pur­poses only. If you have been sued, con­tact me at the Law Office of Fred­eric R. Abram­son at 212–233-0666.

Trademarks

by Fred Abramson

If you own a busi­ness, you spend a sig­nif­i­cant amount of time and effort build­ing it up to be suc­cess­ful.  You need to pro­tect it the same way that you pro­tect any­thing else that is valu­able to you.  What is the best way to do that? With Trademarks.

1) What Is A Trademark?

A trade­mark is any com­bi­na­tion of a word, name, sym­bol, or device that dis­tin­guishes the goods of one per­son from goods man­u­fac­tured or sold by oth­ers.  It does not just apply to man­u­fac­tur­ing busi­nesses, but also to ser­vice busi­nesses where it is called a ser­vice mark, but is essen­tially the same thing as a trade­mark.  Even a par­tic­u­lar color that brands your busi­ness can be deemed a trade­mark.  It could also be trade dress, i.e, the par­tic­u­lar inte­rior style of a restau­rant that is unique to that brand.

2) Why Do You Need One?

The world is com­pet­i­tive enough. Why let some­one take what you have worked so hard to build, when there is a rem­edy to pre­vent them from doing it?   A trade­mark will be able to help you pro­tect and brand your busi­ness with­out hav­ing to worry about com­peti­tors using and dilut­ing your brand, and con­fus­ing your cus­tomers with a prod­uct of lesser qual­ity.  Hav­ing a trade­mark helps you obtain your niche in the mar­ket­place, and helps cus­tomers rec­og­nize your brand.  As a busi­ness owner you spend large amounts of money on adver­tis­ing, mar­ket­ing, and other meth­ods of brand­ing your prod­ucts.  Don\‘t let that money go to waste by not pro­tect­ing your invest­ment in your busi­ness.  When you trade­mark your name, logo, or trade dress, you are pro­tect­ing both your busi­ness and your bot­tom line.

3)  How Do You Get A Trademark?

There are many dif­fer­ent ways to obtain trade­mark pro­tec­tion.  You can obtain pro­tec­tion through the Lan­ham Act, which cov­ers Fed­eral Trade­mark Pro­tec­tion, through indi­vid­ual state laws, and through par­tic­u­lar types of usage.  You want to make sure it is done prop­erly so you are get­ting the pro­tec­tion that you really want.  Your attor­ney can decide what is best for your business.

4) How Do You Pro­tect The Trademark?

A trade­mark can be lost when the trade name becomes so generic, or in such wide­spread use, that it no longer reflects a par­tic­u­lar brand, but only the prod­uct.  Exam­ples of this are Band-Aid brand adhe­sive ban­dages, Scotch Tape brand tape, and Xerox brand copiers.  One way to pro­tect against your trade­mark becom­ing generic is  mak­ing sure not to use the trade­mark as a sub­sti­tute for the name of the prod­uct, such as in the exam­ples above.  Make sure the trade­mark iden­ti­fies the brand.  Come in and we can dis­cuss what the best pro­ce­dure for you and your par­tic­u­lar busi­ness is, and how to pro­tect your trade­mark once you have it.

Trademarks