Meet Nicole Katsin
Nicole Katsin is an associate at Evoke Law, who focuses her practice on intellectual property technology and cannabis matters, including trademark and copyright prosecution and enforcement, trademark trial and appeal board proceedings, licensing agreements, and internet policies. Before joining Evoke Law, Nicole clerked for the honorable Socrates P. Manoukian at the Superior Court of Santa Clara County and served as a legal consultant at MarkLogic. Additionally, while at the University of San Francisco, Nicole held the positions of Editor in Chief of the Intellectual Property Law Bulletin, and Articles Editor on the Board of the USF Law Review.
Understanding Cannabis Trademark Laws
In this episode of Party Like a Marketer, Associate Attorney Nicole Katsin tells us about the importance of cannabis intellectual property for your company. From a legal perspective, you want to create a brand that’s both distinctive and exclusive by using marks. A mark is anything that defines a product or service that is unique to a specific brand. It can be inherently distinctive, or it can become distinctive through extensive and continuous use in the market.
Trademark law breaks this inherent distinctiveness into three different types of marks: fanciful, arbitrary, and suggestive. Listen to this informative podcast to learn more about how popular brands like Starbucks and Coppertone have leveraged marks. Nicole shares how critical understanding trademark law for cannabis is for cannabis intellectual property.
Why You Need a Cannabis Intellectual Property Lawyer
Cannabis startups should think about their intellectual property immediately. It’s expensive to engage lawyers, but it’s even more costly to deal with a cease and desist letter. Furthermore, if you have to rebrand once your business has launched, the money you spent on packaging, website development advertising, and all that comes with your brand is suddenly a sunk cost. And then there is the money you will have to spend on corrected advertising and consumer re-education for your new brand. What a mess! Get it right the first time by getting clearance from an intellectual property lawyer before moving forward. Tune in to Nicole’s episode of Party Like a Marketer to get started with your cannabis intellectual property.
Connect with Nicole and Evoke Law, here.
Listen to Nicole’s podcast here for the full conversation:
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