Branding Expert Witnesses: 7

Gabriele Goldaper has over 45 years experience in the Fashion, Garment, Textile Industry, as a retailer, manufacturer, consultant, and college instructor. Ms. Goldaper is a perceptive and articulate Expert Witness who has been involved in more than150+ Apparel Industry Legal Disputes. She has been deposed and testified in bench and jury trials and arbitrations, for both defendants and plaintiffs.

Ms. Goldaper has owned her own clothing manufacturing company and has held key executive positions in major public and private companies in Southern California. She has been a Management Consultant to over 200 new, failing or growing apparel companies, and completed assignments for USAID in Romania, Egypt, El Salvador, Moscow, Thailand and Bulgaria as an apparel expert.

Ms. Goldaper is a 30-year member of the faculty at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising.

Areas of Expertise Include:

• Copyright Infringement and Trademark Cases
• Opinions on Originality and Substantial Similarity
• Fabric/Print Design, and Origin Issues
• Garment Construction and Design issues
• Customs, Practices and Operations of Clothing Business
• Financial Conditions, Valuations and Financial Matters
• Issues with Manufacturing Contractors/Factories: Domestic and Off-Shore
• Wholesale Distribution to Retailers and Internet Sales
• Quality Standards/Specifications used in Production of Garments

View Consulting Profile.

Rob Wallace has unique expertise in Trademark, Trade Dress, Copyright, Brand Identity and Package Design Infringement. For 35+ years, Rob ran one of the nation's top Brand Identity Strategy and Package Design Resources providing global branding expertise to Fortune 500 companies in virtually all CPG categories. His clients include P&G, Nestle, Pepsico, Unilever, Kraft, Colgate, The Home Depot, Brown-Foreman, Novartis, J&J and more than 50 market leading companies. Manhattan-based, Rob has been an expert witness for important litigation involving:

• Likelihood of Consumer Confusion
• Secondary Meaning
• Brand Valuation & Dilution
• Package Graphic/Structural Design
• Product Design
• Branding Industry Best Practices
• False/ Deceptive Advertising
• Corrective Advertising
• and all brand related issues.

Rob has commissioned literally hundreds of consumer surveys and is uniquely qualified to determine the results of all research. He has worked for attorneys on both the plaintiff and defense sides of his cases. He is effective and efficient with the average project report requiring between 10 and 12 hours.

Dr. Larry Chiagouris has a rare combination serving as a senior Fortune 500 executive and as an accomplished academician. He has provided expert testimony and written opinions on damages, marketing, advertising, intellectual property issues (including the use of survey research) for plaintiffs & defendants at major national & local firms.

Experience summary:

• Experience evenly divided between plaintiff and defendant engagements over 25 cases

• Several cases include elements of intellectual property issues

• Majority of cases involve elements of consumer behavior or survey research

• Majority of cases involve elements of advertising related strategies and tactics

• Majority of cases involve elements of Internet related tactics

• Majority of cases involve written opinions and depositions

• Written and oral testimony in several Federal District Court jurisdictions

• Engaged by both large multinational law firms and small boutique firms

• Class action cases evenly divided between plaintiffs and defendants

Selected by Agency Magazine as one of 10 best and brightest researchers. He brings extensive experience as a Senior Marketing, Branding and Research Executive responsible for directing major assignments for companies such as AT&T, Campbell Soup, Kraft, Miller Brewing, Peugeot, Pfizer, Prudential and Visa.

He has a Ph.D. in Marketing, is Past Chairman, Advertising Research Foundation and Former Director of the American Marketing Association.

Leonard J. Backer has over 28 years of extensive and successful Seating, Tables and  Furniture Industry experience in all key areas. Mr. Backer has been directly involved in the design and development of 250+ seating and table collections. He specializes in Private Label Manufacturing, Sourcing, and Product Development expertise. Mr. Backer provides aggressive Expert Witness and Litigation Support services to attorneys, insurers and businesses for Plaintiff or Defense. He performs site inspections, detailed product reviews and incident analyses. He has worked with law firms and insurance companies to develop and coordinate strategies for various types of legal actions and lawsuits. Very strong hospitality background. Mr. Backer has extensive experience with hotel, restaurant, cruise ship, retail store and senior living incidents. Personal Injury and Product Liability Cases. He provides detailed analyses, written opinions, and expert witness reports for clients throughout the U.S. Strong proven deposition and court testimony. Areas of Expertise:

Furniture Based Disputes, Claims, or Legal Actions Chair Failures Seating Product Liability Personal Injury Purchasing Disputes Seating Product Design / Performance Issues Design Knockoffs

Sales Rep. Commission Disputes Designer Royalties Exclusive Distribution Agreements Product Evaluation Warranty Issues Product Launch Failures Private Label Development Agreements Evaluation of Management Performance

View Leonard Backer's Consulting Profile.

Dr. Thomas Maronick has provided both plaintiff and defense litigators with marketing and consumer expertise for over 25 years. Prior to that he was the in-house marketing expert at the FTC. Since leaving the FTC in 1997, Dr. Maronick has been qualified as an expert in numerous federal and state courts, providing expert reports, affidavits, and testimony on marketing, advertising, and consumer behavior matters. 

Dr. Maronick has designed and implemented over 300 consumer surveys for litigation and/or policy related strategies, using virtually every survey research methodology, including mall-intercept studies, telephone and mail surveys, and studies using the internet and consumer mail panels. Dr. Maronick has testified (deposition/trial) over 75 times in the past five years and is the author of research of the use of surveys in litigation. 

Areas of Expertise:

• False and Deceptive Advertising
• Deceptive Marketing Practices
• Consumer/Advertising Survey Research
• Packaging
• Trademark/Tradedress

Nevium’s experts are trial-tested IP custom & practice damages experts who take a hands-on approach with all their IP litigation assignments. Whether you are in need of an expert to calculate economic damages as lost profits / unjust enrichment, give an opinion on specific business clauses in a license agreement or to leverage Internet and Social Media analytics to prove or disapprove infringement, Nevium has the experience and expertise. 

Litigation Support:Nevium works closely with C-Level executives, in-house and outside counsel to implement the best possible business strategy that intertwines with the legal strategy. Nevium is part of the team early on in the litigation process assisting with discovery requests and deposition questions. Nevium’s experience and expertise allows the managing attorney to focus on the legal issues knowing that Nevium is proactively taking care of the business side of the case. As experienced Intellectual Property Consultants, they have real-word, hands on IP management, monetization and valuation experience that plays out well in front of a judge and jury. Nevium professionals provide IP expert witness testimony related to economic damages in a range of lost profits, unjust enrichment, relief from royalty, reasonable royalty, relief from pay per click, corrective advertising and IP valuation. They author reports and provide testimony for federal and state court claims, arbitration, and mediation related to false endorsement, defamation, infringement and unfair competition. 

Litigation Expertise

Trademark Damages Copyright Damages Patent Damages

Publicity Rights Damages Defamation Damages Internet and Social Media Damages

Areas of Analyses Expertise

Lost Profits Relief from Royalty Reasonable Royalty

Unjust Enrichment Relief from Pay Per Click Corrective Advertising

Past Law Firm Clients

Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld Gordon & Rees Higgs Fletcher & Mack Latham & Watkins Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman

Dorsey & Whitney Greenberg Traurig Husch Blackwell McGuireWoods Winston & Strawn

Doug Bania, CLP, Founding Principal
Doug Bania is a founding principal of Nevium Intellectual Property Consultants.  Nevium is an intellectual property consulting firm specializing in developing IP strategies, IP valuation and monetization of IP as well as providing expert testimony related to IP damages and licensing customs and practices. He has been the named expert for over 75 cases, deposed 20 times and has provided trial testimony 5 times.

Mr. Bania is a Certified Licensing Professional (CLP), a Google Analytics Certified Individual (GAIQ) and is a past committee member (2016 - 2019) for the International Trademark Association (INTA) Internet Committee and the ICANN Compliance and Domain Name Industry Subcommittee, a current member of the INTA Right of Publicity Committee and the American Bar Association (ABA), Copyright & Social Media Committee.

Mr. Bania specializes in analyses for copyright, trade dress, trade secrets and trademark infringement, publicity rights, social media and Internet infringement, defamation, marketing strategy analyses, royalty rate determinations and other intangible assets. Mr. Bania also provides valuation and monetization strategies for trademarks, trade secrets, publicity rights, domain names, Internet and social media assets, brands, copyrights and other intangible assets for financial reporting, bankruptcy and transactional due diligence.

San Diego Office 415 Laurel Street, Suite 341 San Diego, CA 92101 Telephone: 858-255-4361 Email: info@nevium.com

Los Angeles Office 9107 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 450 Beverly Hills, CA 90210 Telephone: 310-975-3145 Email: info@nevium.com

View Nevium's Consulting Profile.

Brent Coker, PhD, is an Online Consumer Psychologist. With a PhD in Electronic Commerce (“Predicting Internet Purchase Intention”), Dr. Coker's research focusses on consumer behavior within the realm of psychology, digital business models, and marketing. He currently teaches Digital Marketing and Digital Business Models at the University of Melbourne.

Dr Coker prepares scientific reports pertaining to consumer behavior, branding, and Digital Marketing and technology related topics, based on scientific findings published in academic peer reviewed journals, and other third party relevant research. Any opinions expressed by Dr Coker are supported by peer reviewed academic research, established academic theory, industry standards, and other relevant logical evidence. 

Dr. Coker’s award winning research into digital marketing and consumer behavior has been published in top peer reviewed academic journals, beginning in 2004 when his research into the integration of the internet into business models won Best Paper Award at the 15th Australasian Conference on Information Systems (ACIS). In the late 1990s, Dr. Coker had a dot-com (fernland.com), and he is currently director of Deloosh Pty Ltd.., inventor of the web analytics tool Webreep., and author of the book Going Viral, and advisor to Wear Cape, Influencer Marketing Agency

 Dr. Coker is available for expert witness work, consultation, and advisement in Australia and internationally.

Areas of Expertise:

Brand Management Consumer Behavior Consumer Psychology Digital marketing Influencer Marketing

Internet Retail Internet marketing strategy Measuring the online consumer experience Social Media Viral Marketing

View Dr. Brent Coker's Consulting Profile.