People | John L. Welch

John has represented clients in scores of patent, trademark, copyright, unfair competition, and domain name lawsuits across the country, and has handled hundreds of opposition and cancellation proceedings before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. He is responsible for the international trademark portfolios of a number of major companies in such diverse fields as restaurant services, food processing machinery, and computer hardware and software. John has obtained numerous utility and design patents for clients in a variety of industries, such as lighting fixtures, electrical instrumentation, ceramic candle holders, food processing machinery, and kitchen utensils. In addition, he has represented clients in many patent, copyright and trademark lawsuits across the country. Some representative matters include:

• Obtained summary judgment of validity and infringement in a patent infringement lawsuit in New Orleans involving a patent on a laser board game, including entry of a permanent injunction.
• Assisted client bank in a proceeding under the Uniform Domain Name Resolution Policy (UDRP) involving the domain names that included the bank’s name, resulting in a transfer of those domain names to the bank.
• Represented a restaurant company in a federal lawsuit alleging infringement of that client’s service mark by another restaurant, resulting in a settlement of the dispute whereby the defendants agreed to change the name of their restaurant.
• Successfully teamed with a company in the clothing field in obtaining a TTAB decision sustaining the client’s opposition to registration of a design of a standing dog in the color yellow, the TTAB finding that mark likely to cause confusion with the client’s standing dog design. 
• Represented an engineering software company in connection with infringement of its copyright in a book in the field of design for manufacture and assembly.

• Harvard Law School, J.D.
• University of Illinois, B.S. in Electrical Engineering

• Admitted to practice law in Massachusetts, Illinois, New York, and the District of Columbia, and in various federal district and appellate courts
• Registered to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
• Member, Board of Editors, The Trademark Reporter
• Member and Co-Chair of the Trademarks and Unfair Competition Committee of the Boston Patent Law Association
• Founder and Publisher of The TTABlog
• Contributing Editor, Allen’s Trademark Digest
• AV rated by Martindale-Hubbell, a designation indicating that his peers rank him at the highest level
• Named as one of New England’s “Super Lawyers” in the field of intellectual property, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009
• Frequent author and lecturer on trademark law, and particularly on the procedure and jurisprudence of the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Recent appearances include the John Marshall Law School Annual Symposium on Intellectual Property and the Boston Bar Associations’ Annual IP Year in Review.