Articles by Sophie Edbrooke, Esq.

Sophie Edbrooke, Esq. is an associate attorney at Gerben IP. She works closely with clients to provide individualized counseling on trademark and copyright matters, across a wide variety of industries. Before joining Gerben IP as an associate, Sophie worked for the firm as a law clerk and summer intern.

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How To's, Trademark Filing, Trademark Protection

The Trademark Playbook for Influencers: Safeguarding Your Brand

Content creators, or influencers, are becoming business owners with million-dollar businesses and have to learn the tenets of business, such as intellectual property. New businesses have the challenge of creating and developing successful brands, but influencers have the challenge of turning a successful brand into a well-protected and long-lasting business. One way they can protect the longevity of their brand? […]

How To's, The Basics, Trademark Protection, Trademark Protection

Trademark Battles: A Guide to Filing or Responding to a Petition to Cancel

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) received over 545,000 trademark applications in 2022. While examining attorneys review each application carefully prior to approval, they are limited in the scope of their examination to application data only. This sometimes leads to the registration of a trademark that is too similar to existing marks. If a damaging trademark has already […]

How To's, The Basics, Trademark Protection, Trademark Protection

What is Trade Dress and How Can It Protect Your Brand?

Three stripes on athletic clothing. Bright red bottoms on shoes. Light blue boxes for jewelry. Do these phrases invoke any particular brands? They should. The owners of these “trade dress” trademarks have poured hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars into the iconic designs and product markers to make them recognizable to consumers. “Trade dress” is a specific type of trademark […]

How To's, Trademark Filing

Best Practices For Drafting Trademark Applications for the Metaverse, NFTs and Blockchain

The “idea” of the metaverse isn’t new – the term was coined in a science fiction novel in the early nineties and the idea of a persistent, virtual world has seen many iterations over the years. However, with recent improvements in VR technology, not to mention a pandemic keeping people socially distant, the dream of the metaverse looks ready to […]

How To's, Trademark Filing

A Guide to Trademark Protection in the Metaverse for Small Businesses

Small businesses are looking to get in on the ground floor of the metaverse, just like industry giants Walmart®, Nike®, and McDonalds®. The difference is, that the big companies have the resources to guess where the metaverse is headed and the manpower to research what the metaverse actually is. So how can a small business stay on the cutting edge and […]

How To's

The Complete Guide to Protecting and Registering Certification Marks

What is a Certification Mark? When looking at almost any product and its packaging, consumers will likely find several symbols and/or words of certification. These symbols/words certify that the product has been given a “seal of approval” from various agencies or organizations. For example, an electronic product that has been safety-tested by the organization UL might use display this symbol: […]

In The News, Pop Culture

LuLaRoe, LuLaRich, or LuLaLawsuit? Amazon Docuseries on LuLaRoe Highlights Needs for Copyright Diligence

The new Amazon Prime docuseries “LuLaRich” shined an unflattering spotlight on LuLaRoe’s business practices and its vast teams of independent fashion retailers, highlighting the pressures of a growing company to meet near-impossible market demands. LuLaRoe has faced multiple copyright infringement lawsuits, which allege that the clothing company’s race to create enabled its designers to steal other artists’ work. What is LuLaRoe? […]

Copyrights, The Basics

The Copyright Claims Board: A New Process for Helping Copyright Owners Fight Infringement

Copyright infringement can be extremely damaging to content owners, who have spent significant time, money, and effort to create content for others to enjoy. What recourse does a copyright owner have, when someone makes unauthorized copies of their work? Previously, the most common option was to file a take-down notice and hope the infringement is removed as soon as possible, limiting […]

The Basics, Trademark Infringement

Letters of Protest: The Basics

What should you do if someone files a trademark that is too similar to yours? One often overlooked option is filing a Letter of Protest with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (the “USPTO”). A Letter of Protest is an effective and inexpensive method of trademark enforcement. The filing essentially requests that the USPTO deny the offending trademark application. […]

The Basics, Trademark Protection

Domain Name and UDRP Disputes – A Definitive Guide

Domain names are a business investment – they can drive traffic to your business, cost you thousands of dollars, and are very important to defend. So how do you protect them? You can take some proactive measures to police infringement on your domain names, but you can also stop infringers through processes like Uniform Domain-Name Dispute Resolution Policy Proceedings (“UDRP”). […]