Richard Mandel

Practice Areas

Richard S. Mandel (Partner) heads the Firm’s Litigation Group and is a litigator with more than 35 years of experience in a full range of trademark and copyright cases as well as cases of unfair competition, false advertising, licensing disputes, right of publicity claims, trade secrets, domain names and other Internet issues in the federal courts nationwide, and opposition and cancellation actions before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. He represents a diverse group of clients, including Universal Music Group, Sony Pictures, Major League Baseball, S&P Global, and Promotion in Motion (d.b.a. PIM Brands) known for its WELCH’S FRUIT SNACKS. He regularly represents clients in federal court actions, contested proceedings and arbitrations. He also serves as an arbitrator on the American Arbitration Association’s commercial panel, and as a court-appointed mediator in the United States District Court of the Southern District of New York mediation program. .

Richard has served as first chair in a wide variety of complex and protracted U.S. intellectual property cases relating to marks such as S&P, FRUIT IS OUR 1st INGREDIENT, JUMANJI, GHOSTBUSTERS and various Major League Baseball team marks. In recent trademark cases, he successfully represented plaintiff S&P Global Inc. at trial obtaining a permanent injunction against use of defendant’s S&P DATA mark for contact center services, where court found likelihood of confusion under the Lanham Act and likelihood of dilution under Delaware law with plaintiff’s widely recognized S&P marks used for financial services, including the S&P 500 mark. Against Coca-Cola Co., he obtained a Federal Circuit Court reversal of a TTAB judgment cancelling registrant Meenaxi’s THUMS UP and LIMCA registrations for soft drinks - court ruled Coca-Cola lacked standing to assert claims based on fame of its marks in India, owing to insubstantial evidence establishing the reputation of those marks in the United States. For Sony Pictures, he successfully argued in TTAB oral hearing that applicant’s COBRA KAI mark for t-shirts was confusingly similar to Sony Picture’s acquired COBRA KAI JIU JITSU mark for martial arts facilities, given the common practice of licensing trademarks for use on a diverse range of collateral products.

Richard has also worked on cutting-edge copyright cases in the music industry. Among these, he successfully obtained a summary judgement for Capital Records against ReDigi Inc., where it was found that defendant’s unauthorized reproductions of plaintiff’s copyrighted sound recordings (which were made available for resale on defendant’s online platform) were not justified by the fair use doctrine and, instead, constituted copyright infringement, with plaintiff awarded attorneys’ fees exceeding $500,000.

Singled out as a “consummate litigator” (The WTR 1000 - The World’s Leading Trademark Professionals) with “extensive expertise in trademark arbitrations and federal court cases,” (The Legal 500), Richard has been consistently recognized by leading ranking services, including The Legal 500 (IP: Copyright, 2013 to present, and Trademarks - Litigation, 2015 to present); The WTR 1000 - The World’s Leading Trademark Professionals (Individuals: Litigation and Enforcement, 2014 to present, including a Gold Band designation in 2024); MIP IP Stars (NY & National – Trademark Star & Copyright Star, 2014 to present); Super Lawyers, New York Metro (IP Litigation, 2007 to present); Best Lawyers in America (IP – Trademarks, Litigation, 2018 to present); Who’s Who Legal, Trademarks (2023); and Expert Guides (Euromoney Institutional Investor PLC) for Trademarks (2015 to present). Richard was short-listed in the category of “Litigator of the Year - New York” at the Managing IP 2023 Americas Awards ceremony.