With a focus on trademarks, marketing and promotions, Tara’s practice is a perfect fit for her background in the law and public relations. She practices from Waxhaw, North Carolina as a member of our virtual office, The Link.
As an undergraduate with law school plans studying public relations, marketing and psychology, Tara was introduced to trademark law in a media law course. She knew instantly that this was a combination of everything she loved and everything she wanted to do, and she immediately decided to focus her eventual law career on trademarks.
Tara helps clients understand and identify trademarks and other intellectual property. When these assets are unregistered, she creates custom strategies for protection of these marks on the federal and state levels and counsels clients through the application process with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Tara also has experience working with international trademark portfolios and liaising with foreign counsel. Once marks are registered, Tara assists with maintenance and enforcement, monitoring the marketplace and taking action to assert client rights against unauthorized third-party users.
Tara works with clients of all sizes, from startups to Fortune 500 companies, across a wide spectrum of industries. She’s enthusiastic about the opportunity to represent clients from fields as diverse as aviation, healthcare, technology, manufacturing and cannabis, and she loves diving in and learning as much about a business and its industry as possible.
Alongside her trademarks work, Tara devotes a substantial portion of her practice to promotions and is the firm’s lead attorney on these matters. She assists a variety of companies, including a major airline, with sweepstakes, contests and promotional giveaways, and she also assists nonprofit organizations and the nonprofit arms of various corporations with similar work to support their missions. Tara helps clients understand the myriad legal risks present in these activities and works with them to design promotions that comply with a patchwork of state and federal laws. She provides balanced legal advice that helps clients accomplish their promotional goals in ways that accommodate legal requirements as well as their own risk tolerance.
Tara prioritizes education for clients: she works frequently with non-attorney business and marketing professionals, and she aims to ensure that these clients grasp the legal issues at hand and understand why she provides the advice she does. She routinely presents formal trainings on trademarks and promotions and takes the time to explain legal nuances to clients one on one. Tara’s practice involves highly esoteric legal concepts that are often unfamiliar even to in-house counsel at client companies, and she has spent years honing the craft of communicating these ideas in easily digestible ways. Tara’s goal is for clients to see their work with her as a true partnership as she helps them protect their intellectual property, accomplish their marketing goals within the confines of the law, and grow their businesses.