Carrie Richey Image

Carrie Richey

Partner

Womble Bond Dickinson

Carrie Richey is a partner with Womble Bond Dickinson. Carrie counsels clients on a broad range of intellectual property litigation matters, including patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright and other intellectual property and technology disputes. She has successfully represented clients in all phases of litigation, including investigation, discovery, law and motion, trial, and appeal and post-grant proceedings before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.

Carrie has represented major tech companies, financial institutions, unicorns, start-up and social networking companies in numerous intellectual property litigation matters. The technology areas at issue in the matters handled by Carrie are highly varied computer hardware and software technologies and include, for example, conversational artificial intelligence, end-point security and anti-viral, anti-hacker, and anti-cyber terror restricted computing environments, end user authentication and number masking technology using cloud services, automatic optical disc discrimination, overdrive technology in plasma display screens, and sales automation and business-analytics software.

Recent Articles by Carrie Richey

Chew on This: What the Bad Spaniels Trademark Decision Means for Free Expression and the Metaverse

In Jack Daniel’s Properties, Inc. v. VIP Products LLC, a unanimous Supreme Court sided with Jack Daniel’s and sent dog toy maker VIP Products scurrying away with its tail between its legs. The decision held that VIP’s commercial use of a dog toy, designed to look like a bottle of Jack Daniel’s whiskey, complete with droll variations on Jack Daniel’s trademarks, is not entitled to First Amendment protections for artistic expression under the “Rogers test.” Rogers v. Grimaldi, 875 F. 2d 994, 999 (2d Cir. 1989). Instead, it is subject to the Lanham Act’s likelihood-of-confusion test to determine if consumers would be likely to confuse VIP’s dog toy with Jack Daniel’s, no matter how parodic. While the justices felt that artistic expression versus trademark use was cut and dried in this instance, that is not always the case in litigation focused on NFTs and the Metaverse.