Trademarks Expert Witnesses: 20

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

CPA, CFE, CPEA, CFF with 35 years of experience as a financial damages, accounting, royalties, licensing, valuation expert.  Calculations in intellectual property (copyright infringement, trademark infringement, patent infringement, DMCA, trade secrets), breach of contract, reasonable royalties, wrongful termination, personal injury, consumer product liability & royalty audits.  2017 California CPA of the Year & 2012 Certified Fraud Examiner of the Year. 

Expert in unjust enrichment & lost profits. Sample Industries: pharmaceuticals, medical devices, music, film, construction, machinery, security, toys, software, hardware, media, entertainment, energy, security, personal injury, partnerships, apparel & consumer products. Real world experience as Chief Audit Officer of Beats, KPMG Partner, and at Occidental Petroleum, Unocal, and Disney. While at Ernst & Young and KPMG, led national fraud and royalty auditing. Vice Chair ('16-'17) Board of Regents of the 80,000+ member Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. More than 3,000 forensic accounting contract investigations. 

Mr. Blum has extensive experience working on economic damages in both simple and multi-billion dollar complex litigations. With over 150 matters as an expert witness, his damage calculations have consistently been accepted in court, even in cases involving settlements up to $1 billion. His reports have been recognized as best examples by judges for their thoroughness and clarity. Mr. Blum has represented a broad range of clients, including leading law firms and major corporations across various industries. Some clients include:

Microsoft, Dolby, Sony, Paramount Pictures, Mattel, Warner Bros., McDonald’s, Shark Tank, WWE, Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Amgen, GM, Sears, IGT, IMG, Tessera, Philips, Diageo, Harley-Davidson, DKNY, Chrysler, Ross, UMB Bank, Bank of America, Everlast, Fate Therapeutics, Medtronic.

Areas of Expertise:

View Sidney Blum'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.

Mehdi Tarrit Mirakhorli, PhD, is a Software Engineering professor in the department of Information and Computer Sciences at University of Hawaii at Manoa. Prior to that, Dr. Mirakhorli served as Kodak Endowed Chair, Associate Professor and Director of Research at ESL Global Cybersecurity Institute and Software Engineering Department at Rochester Institute of Technology.

Litigation Support - Dr. Tarrit Mirakhorli is a Subject Matter Expert in Public and Private Sector Litigation Matters. He has served as an expert on various litigations including SME on federal contract disputes, software trade secret misappropriation, and copyright infringements. With extensive academic experience, he excels at simplifying complex technology concepts for diverse audiences.  

Areas of Expertise:

Dr. Mirakhorli is also the director of Software Assurance Laboratory.  He has been honored with supporting the implementation of President Biden's Executive Order on Improving the Nation's Cybersecurity. 

Dr. Mirakhorli has been an ALTA Distinguished Speaker at Alcatel-Lucent, and has delivered numerous technical briefings to public policymakers, members of Congress, government officials, and the general public. He has carried out various projects of national importance and supported organizations in responding to investigations including OIG.  

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, from hard media historical archives to blockchain, and, as a non-attorney producer, both as owner / licensor and, alternately, as user / licensee.

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 (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, Walt Disney World Christmas Day Parade (live and televised-7yrs), Gilbert Gottlieb, the "Top Gun" Resort and Casino ventures (worldwide), 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, Paramount Pictures, 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.