Trademarks Expert Witnesses: 21

William (Ned) McLeod, Esq., has been a party to many Licensing Arrangements as an attorney specializing in Intellectual Property in the Entertainment Industry (“IP”), both on the licensor and the licensee side of the table, in different matters from hard media historical archives to blockchain based creations, and, as a non-attorney producer, both as owner / licensor and, alternately, as user / licensee.

As an entertainment attorney for more than 30 years, Mr. McLeod has personally negotiated hundreds of licenses, and reviewed and evaluated hundreds more. He has studied or taught over 400 hours of Continuing Legal education courses, from historical copyright status analysis to blockchain mechanisms, dissecting project content as different as movie scripts and royalty contracts. Mr. McLeod has designed a college course curriculum for international university students entering the resort and theme park entertainment fields. His handling of licenses have covered a broad scope of venues and clientele, including:

The Rockefeller Center (NYC), the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry and The Navy Pier (IL), the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History (TX, with 8 associated museums), Graceland (TN), Niagara Falls (NY), The Smithsonian, the Kennedy Space Center (FL), Port of Los Angeles (CA), National Harbor (DC), Leadership Conference of Women Religious (“Catholic Sisters,” MD), the Tupperware Center (FL), Gatorland (FL), the Orlando Ballet (FL), Bob Ross (painter), Cousteau family ventures, 7 years of the Walt Disney World Christmas Day Parade (live and televised), and others.

Areas of Expertise:

Litigation Support - In Ned McLeod's 40 year capacity as producer, consultant, or attorney, he has negotiated, constructed, analyzed, attacked, or defended hundreds of business entertainment contracts, licenses, and litigation claims; and served as either consultant or expert witness on such matters.

As counsel (or, on occasion for a personal project, as producer), Mr. McLeod has obtained and operated licenses regarding Content, Properties, Brands, Venues, Likeness, Life Story, etc.) from Universal Music, Walt Disney Company, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, SONY, the Getty Images, Warner Bros. Music, TED Talks, Discovery Channel, ABC News, The Cousteau Society, Ford Motor Company, the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Collection, National Geographic, Jerry Lewis Films, The Beach Boys, Irving Berlin Music, Estate of Marvin Hamlisch, Richard Petty, Random House Books, Simon and Schuster, HarperCollins, the United States Air Force, NASA, Estate of Yuri Gagarin, Arkham House Books, and others.

Mr. McLeod has been the expert consultant and reviewer for licensing documents litigated against major industry icons SONY Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures, National Enquirer, Mad Magazine, and others involving the review of thousands of pages of licenses from domestic and international records. In songs alone, Mr. McLeod has licensed hundreds regarding films, musicals, and film clips.  

View Ned McLeod's Consulting Profile.

More than 40 years experience: defective packaging; unreasonably dangerous products; failure-to-warn; materials-handling; warehousing; cargo loading and securement; falling cargo; insurance claims for loss or damaged cargo; falling merchandise; patent infringement; trade-dress infringement. Has testified in state and federal courts and knows how to connect with a jury. Has worked for Plaintiffs and Defendants. Services: consulting; analysis; cite inspections; exemplar testing; opining; report writing; testifying. Long list of attorney references. Self-employed consultant. Former employee at Fortune 100 firms. Former university instructor. Many published articles and speaking engagements. Knows how to combine theory and practice.

Mr. Blum, CPA, CFE, CPEA, CFF has over 30 years of professional experience as a forensic accounting testifying expert in damages, intellectual property, reasonable royalties & royalty audits. Mr. Blum is a leading licensing contract terms expert. He was 2017 California CPA of the Year & 2012 Certified Fraud Examiner of the Year. 

Leader in intellectual property, royalties, patents, trademarks, copyrights, DMCA, breach of contract, unjust enrichment, lost profits, & royalty audits.  Industries include: toys, pharmaceuticals, software, medical devices, media & entertainment, energy, music, film, apparel & consumer products. Chief Audit Officer at Beats, Big 4 Partner, Fortune 50 companies Occidental Petroleum, Unocal, and Disney. While at Ernst & Young, led fraud and royalty auditing. Vice Chair (2016-2017) Board of Regents of the 80,000 member Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. Has lead more than 1,500 forensic accounting investigations. 

Complex Economic Litigations and Intellectual Property Expert Witness - As an Economic Damages expert witness, Mr. Blum has worked on matters from simple to several billion dollars complex litigations. He has been retained as an expert witness for more than 100 matters. Most retentions have required a Federal report.  Mr. Blum is a Certified Fraud Examiner, Certified Professional Environmental Auditor, and Certified in Financial Forensics by the AICPA. His damage calculations have consistently been accepted over other experts.  His reports are noted as best examples by judges. Broad range of clients for leading law firms. Representative clients: Amgen, Microsoft, Disney, Dolby, Sony, Paramount Pictures, Mattel, GM, Sears, IGT, IMG, Tessera, Philips, Diageo, Harley-Davidson, DKNY, Chrysler, Ross, Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Shark Tank, WWE, Warner Bros., McDonalds, SAG, DGA, WGA, Conor McGregor, UMB Bank, Bank of America, Everlast, etc.

Areas of Expertise:

View Sidney Blum's Consulting Profile.

Garry E. Kitchen is a respected Video Game Expert Witness, with 40 years of experience in the industry, as a developer, game designer, publisher, and business executive. An early pioneer in the art, he has been recognized with numerous accolades and awards, including a WEBBY award, Inc. Magazine Entrepreneur of the Year, Video Game Designer of the Year, Software Publishers Association (SPA) Excellence in Software, Video Game of the Year, Lifetime Achievement Award(s) and many others.

Mr. Kitchen's products have generated more than $300M (USD) in retail sales. His noted achievements include Donkey Kong (Atari), Keystone Kapers (Video of the Year nominee), Bart vs the Space Mutants (the first Simpsons home video game), and Garry Kitchen's GameMaker (the first integrated development environment (IDE) for video games). As Vice President of Game Publishing for Viacom/Nickelodeon Television, Kitchen executive produced the Addicting Games Mobile app for iOS, Viacom's first mobile game to reach #1 in the competitive Apple App Store (2012). 

Litigation Support - Mr. Kitchen has successfully performed as a technical expert for industry-leading companies, including Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Apple, Ubisoft, Wargaming, Disney, LEGO, Hasbro, Zynga, FanDuel, and SuperCell. The majority of his clients have worked with him on multiple engagements, a testament to their satisfaction with his performance. He has been deposed dozens of times and has significant experience testifying at trials and arbitration hearings.

Mr. Kitchen has worked on a number of significant interactive entertainment cases, including numerous early patent infringement cases involving the Magnavox/Ralph Baer/William Rusch patent portfolio (the first issued U.S. video game patents), Atari Corp. v. Nintendo antitrust case (1989), and Escobedo v. THQ, the first copyright infringement case involving the use of a protected tattoo image on an in-game character in a video game, and many more. Expert Case List (Partial) 

Areas of Expertise:

Testimonials - Mr. Kitchen takes great pride in going above and beyond for his clients. Here are recent verbatim comments from Mr. Kitchen's clients:

"The pleasure was all ours!! You have been great. I hope to work with you again soon."

"Your report left us speechless and we couldn't be happier."

"Thank you. Your speed and work on this was amazing."

"I very much enjoy working with you and watching you eat up opposing counsel during depositions."

"I don’t know if you heard, but the arbitrator found in favor of [client] on all 8 causes of action asserted by [opposition], awarded no damages, and will award [client] attorney’s fees and costs against [opposition]... Thank you for all of your work on this.  I learned so much and really enjoyed working with you."

Attorney, Antonio R. Sarabia II, has 30 years of experience in Consumer Licensing matters (revenue, standards, performance, and breaches), Trademarks, Copyrights, and issues occurring in the Apparel Industry. 

Background Experience - Mr. Sarabia is intimately familiar with the business problems and legal issues fashion companies may face. At the beginning of his apparel industry experience, Mr. Sarabia spent nine years as part of the senior management of Guess?, whose sales grew 400% during a single year. Over the course of his time there, the company transformed from a fad into a mainstay fashion company. Since leaving Guess?, Mr. Sarabia has advised various other apparel companies, from publicly-held companies to fast-growing companies like Earl Jean, to smaller start-up companies. .

Litigation Support - Mr. Sarabia is available to serve as an expert witness, whether through testifying, identifying important or relevant issues, or suggesting discovery in his areas of expertise. His services are available to attorneys for plaintiff and defendant.

Areas of Expertise:

• Licensing: revenue projections, forecasts, standards, performance, breach, selection of licensees, damages
• Intellectual Property: analysis, due diligence, investigations;
• Copyrights:  substantial similarity, originality
• Trademarks: secondary meaning, infringement, dilution, searches, investigations, due diligence, theft, trade dress, counterfeiting, rebuttal on damages
• Apparel Business: contracts, manufacturing (local, abroad), import, export, sales, distribution, apparel copyrights, substantial similarity of apparel lines, theft and protection of designs, rebuttal on damages
• Design Patents: defenses based on lack on originality, identify and analyze obviousness and prior art
• Attorney Malpractice: standards of practice for apparel business lawyers, intellectual property lawyers, and licensing lawyers

Summary

Mr. Pflaum is the Director of Complex Software Litigation at Quandary Peak Research where he leads teams of experts in a variety of intellectual property, contract, fraud, and computer forensics cases. Since 2013, Mr. Pflaum has specialized in advising clients on software-related intellectual property, software project failure, and contract disputes. Mr. Pflaum has testified as an expert at deposition and trial and has extensive experience reviewing and reverse engineering software source code, architecture, and designs. Mr. Pflaum has reviewed and rendered opinions relating to source code written in a variety of programming languages and relating to a broad range of technologies, including mobile and IoT devices, industrial and automotive controls, consumer and medical devices, and e-commerce and enterprise systems and websites. Mr. Pflaum is also an attorney and registered patent agent with professional experience in financial services and software development.

Software Review Experience (Languages)

C/C++/C#, Obj-C (iOS), Swift,  SQL, Java, Kotlin, VB.Net, COBOL, JS, TS, PHP, Python, GoLang, Ruby, CodeSys, MatLab, Fortran, VHDL, Assembly, TEAL 

Software Review Experience (Industries)

•    Software project failure (Government software procurement, public benefits administration, Out of the Box (OOTB), Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS), customizations, configurations, add-ons and extensions to ERP, SAP, and IBM products)

•    E-commerce and enterprise systems and websites (e.g., SaaS, COTS, OOTB and custom applications, AWS, Azure, IBM, and SAP)

•    Mobile devices (e.g., applications and operating systems for Android and iOS smartphones and tablets), Internet of Things (IoT) devices and sensor networks, and consumer electronics (e.g., set-top boxes and portable media players)

•    Industrial and automotive controls and machine vision (e.g., robotics and factory automation technologies, automotive throttle, braking controls, communication systems, CAN bus communications protocols and designs, and functional safety technology), and on-Chip and on-board controllers including power management and memory access controllers

•    FinTech (e.g., loan underwriting, insurance and benefits administration, consumer credit reporting, cryptographic protocols, cryptocurrencies, smart contracts and peer-to-peer messaging systems)

•    Medical and analytical devices and electronic medical record databases

The team at Nolte Analytics, LLP includes experts with over 40 years of experience performing Damage Analyses, Valuation, Economic Studies, and Financial Investigations. Their experience prevents false starts and avoidable errors, delivering more cost-effective results.

Clients have included companies in the following industries: aerospace, automobile, banking, beverages, construction, electronics, technology, energy, entertainment, food, government, insurance, oil and gas, pharmaceuticals, restaurants, retail, and more.

The experts at Nolte Analytics have been quoted or published in the following, often multiple times: The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Daily Journal, Los Angeles Lawyer, Los Angeles Business Journal, and many others for their opinion on matters relating to their area of specialization.

Litigation Support - Nolte Analytics' client work focuses primarily on valuation of businesses and intangible business assets, economic studies, royalty and fraud auditing, and litigation-related financial analysis. Their experts have served many of this country’s prominent companies and most of the largest law firms, with thousands of hours of testimony and over 200 trial testimonies. They typically present conclusions graphically, using a proprietary presentation system.  As a result, they have an unequalled track record of judges and juries accepting their conclusions.

Areas of Expertise:

• Business and intangible asset appraisal, loss of business value, minority shareholder disputes, buy-sell agreements
• Commercial damages measurements, including, unjust enrichment, lost profits, disgorgement, breach of contract, business interruption, business interference, patent infringement, trademark infringement, patent, copyright and trademark infringement, theft of trade secrets, reasonable royalties
• Employment claims, wrongful termination, wrongful death, personal injury, future lost earnings, loss of earnings capacity, loss of benefits
• Financial accounting Forensic accounting, royalty and compliance audits, fraud investigations

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

Areas of Analyses Expertise

Past Law Firm Clients

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.

View Nevium'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

• SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
• Search Engine "Linking" Campaigns
• PPC (Pay Per Click Advertising)
• Web Hosting
• Web Design
• Web Application Development,
• E-Commerce Site Development
• Web Project Management
• Affiliate Marketing
• Improving Online "Conversions"
• E-Mail Publishing
• Online PR
• "Community" Marketing

Dr. Gerald M. Goldhaber is President & CEO of Goldhaber Research Associates, LLC. Over the past 42 years, he has emerged as one of the nation's leading safety warning communication experts. Dr. Goldhaber has been retained in over 200 lawsuits dealing with the issue of warnings and has written numerous research articles on the subject of effective warning labels. His clients include over 100 of the top 500 corporations in the U.S. and 50 of the top 100 law firms and government agencies including the FDA, CPSC, and the DOD.  He has designed, developed and defended warning labels for International Playtex, Owens Corning Fiberglas, Dr. Pepper Seven Up, Rheem, Otis Elevator, Daikin USA, S. C. Johnson, and the ATV Industry.

Dr. Goldhaber has written and edited 10 books on the topic of communication.  His 11th book, MURDER INC.: How Unregulated Industry Kills or Injures Thousands of Americans Every Year...and What You Can Do About It is now in print.  For the past 11 years, he has published the Goldhaber Warnings Report, which reaches over 10,000 litigators nationwide.  He has served as an analyst for numerous radio and television shows, most recently CNN Tonight. He has been selected as a member of Who's Who in America and Who's Who in the World.

Areas of Expertise: 

Product Liability and Personal Injury

Warning Label Research

Warnings and Safety Communications

Radhakrishnaiah Parachuru is a Textile Engineer with BS, MS and PhD degrees in Textile Engineering & MS degree in Applied Statistics. A multidisciplinary scientist, Dr. Parachuru possesses more than 35 years of teaching, research, and industrial experience in Polymer, Fiber, Textile, Apparel, Carpet, and other related disciplines. 

Serving as the coordinator of industry and public support activities at Georgia Tech, Dr. Parachuru has completed more than 180 applied research projects for the benefit of all segments of the Textile and Allied industries. Projects completed fall in the following categories:

• Product / Process Optimization
• Testing and Evaluation of all Types of Fiber Products Including Woven & Knitted Fabrics, Nonwovens, Carpets, and Technical Textilles
• Flammability Testing of Fabrics, Garments, Carpets and Nonwovens
• Application of Advances in the Materials Field, Especially Advances in Nano and Bio Materials for the Advancement of Fiber Product Industry
• Application of Performance Finishes to Fiber Products Through Wet Treatments
• Technical Trouble Shooting in Spinning, Weaving, Knitting, Dyeing, Printing and Textile Finishing Processes
• Design and Evaluation of New Fiber Products for Application in Medical, Construction, Transportation, etc. Sectors
• Assistance for Product Diversification
• Establishment of Quality Control Facilities and QC Routines

Dr. Parachuru has also conducted basic research in the area of Textile Manufacturing and served as the main advisor of several graduate students at Georgia Tech. He has been an active member of Fiber Society, AATCC, ASTM and TQCA. Dr. Parachuru currently serves as an active member of several AATCC technical committees and also as chairman of the AATCC committee on statistics. His current research interests are in the area of medical and industrial textiles. 

Consultation Services - Dr. Parachuru offers technical consultation to manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, and retailers. His services cover the entire spectrum of the fiber product industry. 

Litigation Support - Dr. Parachuru has been qualified as a Fiber / Textile Expert after appearing as an expert in more than Forty court cases. His experience covers federal, state, and county courts in multiple states within the United States.

Areas of Expertise:

Eric Forister, PhD, is an expert Economist with testifying experience on market definition, market power, and damages. His expertise includes applying advanced statistical techniques to datasets, synthesizing information from documents, and designing and evaluating surveys. A Senior Economist at Econ One, he focuses on relevant questions to tackle complex issues with an efficient and effective style of communication. Dr. Forister also has extensive experience consulting on issues including royalty rates, irreparable harm, sampling, survey design, common impact, and materiality.

Ideal Client Engagement: For litigation-related matters, an ideal engagement would be providing an opinion on economics, damages, market power, or market definition; or providing pre-litigation advice on the economics of potential claims, or the merits of a survey. For non-litigation matters, an ideal engagement would be helping to explain the economics of different business models or consulting to those considering buying or starting an optometry office.

Experience: Dr. Forister has acted in a support/consulting role on over 100 matters. His support work has been a mix of plaintiff and defense work. Dr. Forister has designed and evaluated surveys for IP and marketing cases and worked on a wide range of other matters, including:

• Antitrust - price fixing, exclusionary conduct, monopsony, unfair competition, Robinson-Patman
• Intellectual Property - SEP, FRAND, patents, trademark, irreparable harm
• Marketing - false advertising, product labeling
• General Damages - breach of contract, bankruptcy

Education/Training:

• PhD in Business Administration (Field: Economics), Stanford Graduate School of Business
• BS in Mathematics / Economics, University of California at Los Angeles, magna cum laude

View Dr. Forister's Consulting Profile.

Reasoning, Inc. provides expert testimony for trademarks, defamation, authorship attribution, and communicative malpractice related to faulty tests and surveys. Reasoning is a group of doctoral-level linguists and logicians with superior understanding of all aspects of language. We do linguistic and logical analyses of publications, newspapers, books, letters, interviews, advertisements, manuals, contracts--to identify meanings, inferences, innuendoes, bias, actual malice, damage to reputation, similarity to other documents, copyright infringement, plagiarism, breach of contract, authorship, and fraud.

As a specialist in educational testing, Dr. Habick provides expert testimony on educational practices related to fairness, bias, psychometrics, and flawed test questions or testing programs. He provides Linguistic Analysis of news reports and other communications and in the assessment of Violations of Legal, Ethical, and Professional Standards.

Dr. Habick testified as an expert witness in linguistics in the U.S. District Court, Trenton, in The United States of America v. Tyshon Bey. Dr. Habick performed linguistic analyses on defamation and trademark cases for Pisanelli-Bice, Las Vegas; Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick, Tampa; Seed Intellectual Property Law Group, Seattle, and Perkins Coie, Seattle.

Reasoning, Inc. also provided expert testimony on unfair testing, grading, and educational practices for Seals v. State of Mississippi et al.

Areas of Expertise:

Professional Affiliations
American Dialect Society (ADS)
International Association of Forensic Linguists (IAFL)

Sam Malek is currently a Software Engineering Professor in the Informatics Department within the School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. He has over 20 years of experience in academia and industry. 

Prior to his academic appointment, Prof. Malek worked for several years as a Software Engineer, Software Architect, and Programmer at a variety of companies, including the Boeing Company and PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting.

Results of Prof. Malek's research have appeared in more than 120 manuscripts, which have been published in peer-reviewed scientific conferences and journals. These publications have been cited more than 9,000 times according to Google Scholar. Prof. Malek has received numerous awards for his scientific contributions to the field of computer science, including the ACM SIGSOFT test-of-time award (2020) and the National Science Foundation CAREER award (2013). 

Litigation Support - In his capacity as an expert witness in more than 40 cases, Prof. Malek has come across and testified about a broad range of Software Technologies and Intellectual Property, including Patent Infringement, Trade Secret, Copyright, Breach of Contract, False Claims Act, Software-related Criminal Activity, and Software-related Personal Injury.

Prof. Malek has offered testimony at trial, deposition, and arbitration on more than 30 occasions. He has drafted validity, invalidity, infringement, and non-infrignement reports, and also has extensive experience with breach of contract disputes, often involving software development projects. Prof. Malek has testified in high-stakes jury trials in various US district courts and has submitted declarations and offered deposition testimony to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) in the Inter Partes Review (IPR) of patents.  At trial, he draws on his teaching skills as an instructor to breakdown complex technical concepts in ways that can be explained to non-technical jurors.

Areas of Expertise: