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Michelle C. Burke is counsel in the law firm of McDermott Will & Emery LLP based in the Chicago office. She is a part of the Firm's Intellectual Property, Media & Technology Department and concentrates her practice on trademark, copyright and unfair competition counseling and litigation, including the protection of copyrights and trademarks in cyberspace. Michelle has practiced in this area for over 20 years, and her clients are and have been diverse, including manufacturers of electronics and a wide variety of other goods, health-care providers, management consulting firms, financial services providers, museums, engineering firms, software developers, internet e-commerce businesses, trade associations, advertising agencies and promotion houses and hospitality, publishing, entertainment and media companies.
Michelle has extensive experience in the procurement, protection and licensing of U.S. and foreign trademarks, representing clients before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in hundreds of trademark applications and in oppositions before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. She has advised international corporations on the organization and operation of intellectual property holding companies to ensure that their valuable corporate names and trademarks are not put in jeopardy as a result of improper transfers or licensing. An important aspect of her trademark practice is counseling new companies on the selection and clearance of their corporate names, often on a global basis, and providing the risk analysis essential to that process. Another significant aspect of her trademark practice involves developing and implementing large-scale internet policing programs for clients to help them detect misappropriation of their trademarks in cyberspace and to retrieve their trademarks from cybersquatters through litigation and UDRP arbitration proceedings.
As a counselor on copyright and related issues, Michelle has a wide range of experience with transactions between clients in diverse sectors and their advertising agencies, product developers, business consultants, writers, artists, graphic designers and other service-providers, involving the creation, production and ownership of an equally diverse range of creative works such as new products, ideas for business methods, computer programs and software systems, catalogs, advertising and promotional campaigns, fund-raising campaigns, industrial films, museum exhibits, product and convention displays, and executive and corporate biographies. She has assisted numerous clients in securing registration of their copyrights in all of these types of works, and has managed the copyright registration programs for many clients including educational publishers and software developers.
As a result of her broad experience, Michelle is often asked to counsel clients and other lawyers in connection with possible litigation resulting from breach of service contracts, the dissolution of partnerships, and other situations in which the continued ownership or use of copyrighted works and trademarks is a central or significant issue. She has herself litigated numerous trademark and copyright matters. For example, she was lead copyright counsel in a jury trial in the Northern District of Illinois successfully defending a client in the ornamental household product field against claims of copyright infringement and unfair competition. Prior to the trial in this case, Michelle led a team that was able to obtain a preliminary injunction preventing the copyright infringement plaintiff from unfairly spreading through the market its claims that the client's products were infringements: Art Line, Inc. v. Universal Design Collections, Inc., 966 F.Supp. 737 (N.D. Ill. 1997). Michelle also has represented clients in dozens of trademark and domain name disputes resolved successfully prior to litigation.
Michelle was the recent co-author of Brand Leveraging - New Income Streams in a Lukewarm Economy, McDermott IP Review, Spring 2003, which was republished as "Brand" New Income Streams in Today's Lukewarm Economy in the Mass High Tech Journal, July 2003. She has addressed many legal and industry groups on trademark and copyright topics, including recent presentations on Licensing Trademarks: Basic Principles and Drafting Considerations, at the 15th National Conference on Licensing Intellectual Property sponsored by the American Conference Institute, and on Designs, Digital Files and Software: You and the Law, at several embroidery industry conventions in 2001 and 2002.
Michelle is admitted to practice in Illinois, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Education:
Harvard Law School, J.D. (cum laude), 1983.
Lake Forest College, B.A. (with honors), 1980. |
