Ronald Coleman

I am a lawyer in New York and New Jersey specializing in commercial litigation, including trials, in the federal and state courts. I also work extensively with online businesses, specifically in connection with the use of intellectual property and social networking on the Internet, in both litigation and non-litigation roles. My firm is recognized as a leader in construction litigation.

I have successfully represented clients of every size in civil litigation, arbitration and mediation in a variety of subject areas, including contract disputes, distributorship litigation, copyright, trademark and unfair competition cases, claims sound in torts of competition, toxic tort and insurance coverage litigation, discrimination and wrongful discharge cases, trade secrets, and cases involving restrictive covenants, rabbinical courts and real estate. I also provide general business counseling, advice and service.

My blog about copyright, trademark and related issues, LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION®, was recognized by the ABA Journal as one of the top 100 law-related blogs in the country in its first-ever listing in 2007. It is one of the top handful of IP-related blogs on all rankings based on traffic, influence or both.

• Peer-Review Rated AV - Preeminent

  Martindale Hubbell Law Directory
  • 1999

  Received AV rating as an associate in a New Jersey firm; have retained it since and "re-qualified" it for New York.

• JD, 1988

  Northwestern University School of Law

  • Trademark Law
  • Patent Law
  • Jurisprudence
  • Law and Social Order
  • Federal Jurisdiction
  • Antitrust
  • Advanced Antitrust
  • Land Use
  • Advanced Constitutional Law
  • Corporate Finance
  • Economic Analysis of the Law
  • Corporations
  • International Law Seminar

• AB, Economics, Politics

  Princeton University

  • Macroeconomics
  • International Relations
  • Soviet-Type Economies
  • Roman History
  • American Social History
  • Human Evolution
  • Description and Analysis of Price Systems
  • American Political Thought
  • Solzhenitsyn
  • Civilization of the Early Middle Ages
  • Political Economy
  • Historical Linguistics
  • Civilization of the High Middle Ages
  • Microeconomic Theory
  • Analyses of Capitalism
  • Philosophical Foundations of Democracy

• Spanish

1. Commercial Litigation
2. Arbitration
3. Appeals
4. Mediation
5. Intellectual Property
6. IT law
7. Trademark Infringement
8. Copyright Litigation
9. Civil Litigation
10. Media Law
11. Social Media
12. Blogging
13. Social Networking
14. E-commerce
15. Internet Law
16. Unfair Competition

• Trademark, Copyright, and the Internet: Time to Return Balance to Civil Litigation

  • Engage Magazine (Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies)
  • August 2010
  Authors: Ronald Coleman

  The law and business of intellectual property are in upheaval today. Essentially, the concepts that underlay the conceptual, statutory, and judicial schemas that govern each of patent, trademark and copyright are rapidly being overwhelmed by technologies that could not have been foreseen even half a generation ago, much less when the roots of the legal doctrines surrounding each of these types of IP protection and the economic models on which they are premised took hold. The purpose of this essay is to consider one of these areas in particular, namely trademark, and to focus in particular on how developments in copyright arising from the new digital media have affected this area of law. I argue that a series of legal developments has turned an area of law historically meant to shield consumers from non-authentic merchandise and preserve entrepreneurial investments in “brands” into a weapon to stifle competition and protect entrenched, inefficient business models. These developments have taken trademark law far beyond the language of the Lanham Act, the modern trademark statute, into a world where judges have not feared to tread and “make policy” affecting broad areas of economic activity to Congress’s silent assent…

• Hands off Blogs: Mandatory disclosure of payment to bloggers runs counter to free expression

  • New Jersey Law Journal
  • January 26, 2007
  Authors: Ronald Coleman

  No one is free from bias of some sort or another, especially people who spend their time (paid or otherwise) writing opinions — whether in daily newspaper columns, legal newspapers or blogs, the newest, most exciting and most democratic medium of expression in the real and virtual worlds.
  
  Opinion writers are understood by axiom to have an opinion; and it is just as axiomatic that opinions can be “negotiable” in all sorts of ways, overt and subtle.
  
  Yet in the emerging world of blog publishing, there is a troubling trend toward mandatory disclosure of one kind of bias — the kind directly attributable to payment of material compensation to a blogger addressed specifically in a Dec.7 Federal Trade Commission informal opinion involving a company called PayPerPost Inc. — that is misguided, contrary to free speech principles and a threat to the growth of a dynamic economic and cultural phenomenon. . .

• De Minimis Confusion on the Internet: Compounding the Error of Initial Interest

  • Journal of Internet Law
  • October 2003
  Authors: Ronald Coleman

  An early scholarly article analyzing the conceptual errors underlying the then-nascent doctrine of "initial interest confusion."

• Legislating Morality in the 21st Century

  • Engage Magazine (Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies)
  • October 2003
  Authors: Ronald Coleman, David Marshak

  [T]he Court … says: “[W]e think that our laws and traditions in the past half century are of most relevance here. These references show an emerging awareness that liberty gives substantial protection to adult persons in deciding how to conduct their private lives in matters pertaining to sex.” Apart from the fact that such an “emerging awareness” does not establish a “fundamental right,” the statement is factually false. States continue to prosecute all sorts of crimes by adults “in matters pertaining to sex”: prostitution, adult incest, adultery, obscenity, and child pornography. Sodomy laws, too, have been enforced “in the past half century,” in which there have been 134 reported cases involving prosecutions for consensual, adult, homosexual sodomy. In relying, for evidence of an “emerging recognition,” upon the American Law Institute’s 1955 recommendation not to criminalize “‘consensual sexual relations conducted in private,’ ” ante, at 11, the Court ignores the fact that this recommendation was “a point of resistance in most of the states that considered adopting the Model Penal Code.”

• Online Auction Sites and Trademark Infringement Liability

  • Record of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York
  • 2003
  Authors: Ronald Coleman, Roberta Kraus

  We were co-authors of this report of the Trademark and Unfair Competition Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. It was the first article to analyze the range of possible grounds for imposing liability for secondary or other trademark infringement on online auction sites such as eBay. The report and its conclusions were adopted by the Association as a whole.

• Hacker with a White Hat

  • Mealey's Cyber Tech Litigation
  • May 14, 2001
  Authors: Ronald Coleman, Matthew W. Carlin

  Consideration and analysis of whether a court has the power to authorize utilizing self-help -- i.e., hacking -- to disable or otherwise impinge on the activities of a website found to be operating contrary to law but refusing, contumaciously, to obey court orders demanding cessation of those activities.

• Court Nixes Fees for Fact Witnesses

  • National Law Journal
  • September 22, 1997
  Authors: Ronald Coleman, Elizabeth Sher

  Critical analysis of a U.S. District Court decision in the District of New Jersey forbidding compensation of fact witnesses for the time spent by them, including time spent doing research and otherwise preparing to testify in the manner similar to outside experts, under any circumstances.

• New York's Choice of Law Doctrine in Coverage Cases

  • Mealey's Litigation Report
  • January 28, 1997
  Authors: Ronald Coleman

  Analysis of the developing doctrine regarding choice of law principles applied by New York courts in insurance coverage cases involving loss locations in multiple jurisdictions.

• "Responses to Complaints," Business and Commercial Litigation in the Federal Courts

  • American Bar Association Litigation Section / West Group
  • 1998
  Authors: Ronald Coleman, Clyde A. Szuch

  "Chapter 6, inclusive of sample forms, offers seventy-three pages which painstakingly examines and discusses Motions to Dismiss, other Rule 12 alternative responses to a Complaint as well as strategic considerations in the form and substance of the factual averment responses and affirmative defenses. My recommendation of the text arises from its thoroughness and comprehensiveness. Civil Procedure class in law school lacked the precision and clarity which this Chapter presents in defining and explaining the multiplicity of issues associated with Motions to Dismiss, Answer strategies, affirmative defenses, Cross-claims and Counterclaims in a practice pointer format." -- West Virgina Lawyer

• Trademark Talk: Bully for Who?

  • Intellectual Property Magazine
  • January 2011
  Authors: Ronald Coleman

  A perspective on the PTO's call for public commentary about so-called "trademark bullies."

Groups and Associations:

International Trademark Association Internet Committee -- Subcommittee on Online Trademark Use, Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, National Republican Lawyers Assocation, New York Intellectual Property Law Association, Agudath Israel of America, Association of the Bar of the City of New York (Trademarks and Unfair Competition Committee), Computer Law Association

• 
  4BF (Four Bridges Forum)
• 
  ABA Forum on Franchising
• 
  Aish HaTorah Alumni
• 
  Career Strategies Group - Focused on your job search
• 
  Competition Lawyers group
• 
  ConExec
• 
  Construction Lawyer Network
• 
  Cyber Laws & Online Security
• 
  Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
• 
  Frum Lawyers
• 
  INTA Group on LI (International Trademark Association)
• 
  IP Lawyers
• 
  IP Litigation
• 
  IP Scholars Network
• 
  IPso Jure
• 
  Intellectual Property Professionals
• 
  International Legal Professionals Networking Group - powered by Laurence Simons
• 
  Internet Law Network
• 
  Jewish Professionals
• 
  LAW OF FASHION ®
• 
  LPRN-NYC
• 
  Law Partner Referral Network: The Professional Networking Community For Law Firm Partners
• 
  Lawyers & Legal Professionals using JD Supra
• 
  Legal Blogging
• 
  Legal Marketing
• 
  Legal Tweeters
• 
  LinkedIn Mobile
• 
  LinkedIn for Android
• 
  Linking CONSTRUCTION
• 
  Lowenstein Community (Alumni & Employees)
• 
  New Jersey Attorney -Lawyer Group
• 
  New York Attorneys
• 
  Northwestern Law Alumni
• 
  Northwestern University School of Law Alumni & Student Career Networking Group
• 
  Partners in Torah
• 
  Pitney Hardin Alumni
• 
  Princeton Law Alumni
• 
  SOCIALEX - The Social Media Legal Community
• 
  The Copyright Society of the USA
• 
  The Economy
• 
  The Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy Studies [OFFICIAL GROUP]
• 
  The Jewish Business Network (JBN)
• 
  The NJ Networking Forum
• 
  TigerJobs
• 
  Trademark and IP Infringement
• 
  Useful Marketing Tools for Small Firms

Honors and Awards:

Who's Who in America, Who's Who in American Law, Bar Register of Prominent Lawyers, Rated AV "Preeminent" by Martindale-Hubbell, Rated 10.0 "Superb" by Avvo.com