Intellectual-property law firm Merchant & Gould has launched a business-consulting group that aims to protect online-retailing brands, and it's using a software tool it created do provide the service.
Online retailers face potential legal problems around patents, trademarks and intellectual property. Merchant & Gould executives think its new consulting capabilities will help clients combat those potential problems. What's more, the timing is right since e-commerce boomed during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The new business consulting group, M&G Integrator, lets clients fill out a survey on their company. Then a computer algorithm assesses the answers and reports back where risk lies within a company — and the steps a company can take to mitigate those risks.
William Schultz, a partner in the firm's Minneapolis office, will lead the M&G Integrator Program. “It’s lot more robust than what we’ve previously done," he said. "It’s proactive. One of the big problems we have in brand protection is we’re reactive.”
Previously, the firm's attorneys had to analyze business plans and financial documents and interview numerous employees of a company to provide a similar analysis. The new computer-assisted model will cut that time down dramatically.
No new hires will be added as of now, but that could change.
"We'd be hiring brand-protection specialists" if we need too, Schultz said. "The thing I like about it is it's made for executives. You can look at a chart and say, 'I see where our risk is.' "
Schultz did not say how much revenue the new service could bring in.
“Our brand protection is definitely over seven figures and this is going to add to that," he said.
The firm has seven offices across the country, with the most recent being a Los Angeles practice that opened about a year ago.
Merchant & Gould is the second largest IP law firm in the Twin Cities with 46 IP attorneys in the metro area and the 19th-largest law firm overall with about 50 attorneys in the area. It has roughly 100 attorneys firm-wide.
