Smith-Carra, Heather

As an advocate for brand protection, Heather works with clients around the world to manage, protect, and enforce their trademark, copyright, and trade dress rights. She focuses her practice on trademark and copyright prosecution and counseling matters, as well as cancellation and opposition proceedings before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB).

Heather represents clients ranging from startups to international corporations to pro bono organizations on a variety of intellectual property issues, including trademark, trade dress, and copyright infringement matters. She has significant experience navigating clients through the entire trademark process from trademark clearance searches and new application filing to responding to refusals and handling registration and renewals.

Clients experiencing Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) violations, as well as infringement on social media and online marketplaces, seek Heather out to protect their online presence. They also come to her for counseling on international trademark issues and help with prosecuting global trademark portfolios. In particular, Heather enjoys trademark and trade dress survey work in U.S. district court and TTAB proceedings.

Prior to launching her legal career, Heather worked as patent and trademark prosecution paralegal and trademark law clerk at Banner Witcoff, where she also conducted research for the firm’s IP video game blog, PatentArcade.com. Heather gained valuable experience in these roles that gives her a unique perspective and allows her to offer clients a full-range of services.