Intellectual Property Winner: Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner

Describe your firm’s approach to litigation and your strategy for building successful teams for trials or other matters. Finnegan’s success in litigation is predicated on the depth and diversity of experience of the members of our teams. We have more than 230 litigators with substantial bench and jury trial experience who have technical degrees (150+ with graduate degrees) in virtually every field that we have litigated. Our ranks include former Federal Circuit and district court clerks, [International Trade Commission] staff attorneys, and [U.S. Patent and Trademark Office] examiners and [Patent Trial and Appeal Board] judges. And, as a full-service IP firm, we have unparalleled experience across the entire spectrum of IP issues that a client faces including patent, trademark, trade secret and copyright litigation and counseling.

Discuss the two biggest intellectual property litigation cases your firm worked on in 2019 and how you reached successful outcomes. [Finnegan] secured a victory for Combe in the [U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia] involving the VAGISIL brand of feminine-care products, winning a de novo appeal from an adverse ruling at the [Trademark Trial and Appeal Board]. The court reversed the TTAB’s decision, found likelihood of confusion between the parties’ VAGISIL and VAGISAN marks, and concluded the results of Combe’s confusion survey were “powerful evidence of actual confusion.”