Heather A. Antoine

“I credit a lot of the success I have just to having amazing people who have supported me and mentored me,” Antoine said. “Even though you get more senior in your career, you still have a need for community and I think that’s what really helped me throughout my career.”

The 17-year veteran supports companies at each of its stages, from choosing its name to ongoing brand management and the insurance that portfolios are safeguarded and ready for growth and sale.

She’s able to utilize her knowledge to help guide many companies to design and strengthen their privacy and data security policies and practices, such as the California Consumer Privacy Act, the General Data Protection Regulation and the Children’s Online Privacy and Protection Act, on both international and domestic scales.

“I take each client separately and the first thing I try to do is really learn about them. That’s the most important thing,” Antoine said. “What is it that they’re doing? What goods are they selling? What services are they providing? And then we get into figuring out strategy and costs, in terms of what their needs are, and go from there.”

Antoine is also able to achieve this through trademark clearance and selection, domestic and foreign trademark prosecution, enforcement, proceedings before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, licensing, trade secret protection, copyright, rights of publicity, domain name disputes and general client counseling.

In a recent proceeding, she and her team successfully filed two appeals before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, which resulted in the trademark examiner’s withdrawal of their refusal and issuance of the respective marks.

“We went through the trademark prosecution process, filed the trademark application, and it was refused,” Antoine explained. “We then responded to the refusal and the examiner maintained that the trademark was not entitled to registration. So we filed an appeal brief with the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board and then rather than actually respond to the appeal, the trademark examiner withdrew the opposition to the mark and allowed the mark to proceed.”

Antoine and her teams regularly litigate before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, with a number of appeals currently pending. “We’re currently writing a reply brief and the argument centers around whether or not the two marks are confusing,” Antoine said. “So the challenge that we face is explaining to the TTAB that the marks are not only different, but with reasons on why. It’s a very creative process and I think that’s what makes it really fun.”

—Devon Belcher