Linda K. McLeod

Partner

Linda McLeod’s practice focuses on litigation before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) and the courts, trademark clearance and prosecution, and client counseling.

During her ten-year career at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), Ms. McLeod gained significant trademark expertise while holding the positions of Administrative Trademark Judge and Interlocutory Attorney with the TTAB, and Examining Attorney for the PTO. As an Administrative Trademark Judge, she presided over opposition and cancellation inter partes proceedings and ex parte appeals from final decisions of the PTO. She sat on panels that decided cases involving a wide variety of trademarks, including product configurations, color trademarks, and domain names. During her five years as an Interlocutory Attorney, Ms. McLeod authored a number of decisions on complicated procedural motions that are published as citable precedents and reviewed in legal journals.

Before joining the TTAB, Ms. McLeod acquired extensive knowledge of trademark prosecution as an Examining Attorney for the PTO, where she issued agency decisions on statutory and procedural issues concerning U.S. trademark applications. She also argued numerous ex parte appeals before the TTAB.

Highlights

• Prevailed in opposition against GAP ONE mark for general merchandising services, namely, marketing on ground of likelihood of confusion with GAP marks for retail store services and clothing; achieved ruling that GAP trademarks are famous and thus entitled to a broad scope of protection.
• Successfully opposed LESSBUCKS COFFEE for coffee, tea, coffee and tea-based beverages, and related retail store services based on a likelihood of confusion with the famous STARBUCKS and STARBUCKS COFFEE trademarks; achieved ruling that STARBUCKS is truly a famous trademark with extensive public recognition and renown.
• Prevailed in likelihood of confusion case involving Harley-Davidson's SCREAMIN’ EAGLE line of motorcycle products, clothing, and accessories.
• Successfully challenged application to register the mark INNOJECT for "medical syringes" based on the registered mark INNOLET for "medical disposable hypodermic syringes." 
• Successfully argued that the mark STREETFIGHTER was generic for a type of motorcycle.
• Successfully opposed an application for the mark CELESTA for software for "smart phones, PDAs, and PCs to provide communications in digital cellular networks and local data management features" based on the mark CELESTICA for memory cards and power supplies.

Professional Recognition

• Ranked among top U.S. trademark lawyers in Legal Media Group's Guide to the World’s Leading Trademark Law Practitioners (2006, 2008, 2010).
• Listed in The International Who’s Who of Trademark Lawyers and Who’s Who Legal: USA—Trademarks.
  

Professional Activities

• International Trademark Association
• American Intellectual Property Law Association (Inter Partes of Trademark-Relations with the USPTO Committee Vice Chair, 2006-2009)
• Federal Circuit Bar Association
• National LGBT Bar Association
• University of Akron School of Law, Board Member, IP Advisory Council
  

Select Publications

• Coauthor. "Recent TTAB Decisions Highlight Challenges of Pleading and Proving Fraud after Bose," The Intellectual Property Strategist, Feb. 2010.
• Coauthor. "Embracing Marketplace Realities: Rediscovering Section 18 of the Lanham Act on the Twentieth Anniversary of Its Revival," The Trademark Reporter, Nov./Dec. 2009.
• Coauthor. "Accelerated Case Resolution: Expedited Litigation for Less Before the TTAB," BNA's Patent, Trademark & Copyright Journal, Nov. 27, 2009.
• Coauthor. "US TTAB Bars Registration of the Mark A-HOLE PATROL on the Ground that the Mark is Immoral or Scandalous," Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice, June 2009.
• Coauthor. "The Federal Circuit Hears Oral Arguments in In re Bose Corp.: Will the 'Knew or Should Have Known' Standard Live On?," BNA's Patent, Trademark & Copyright, May 29, 2009.
• Coauthor. "The Generic Roadblock," Trademark World, March 2007.
• Coauthor. "Credentialing: A Look at a Landmark Legal Case," NOCA News, Nov. 2006.
• "Knew or Should Have Known, Reckless Disregard for the Truth, and Fraud Before the Trademark Office," AIPLA Quarterly Journal, Summer 2006.
• "Ethical Issues in PTO Trademark Prosecution and TTAB Practice," Navigating Trademark Practice Before the PTO 2004, Practicing Law Institute, 2004.
• Coauthor. "Unique Trademarks," Managing Intellectual Property Yearbook, 2001.
• Coauthor. "Summary Judgment Loses Ground Before Trademark Panel," The National Law Journal, May 2000.