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Jennifer Yang

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Jennifer Yang is a partner in the Litigation Department. She is a skilled commercial litigator specializing in false advertising and other intellectual property disputes, including Lanham Act and consumer class action false advertising litigation, advertising challenges before the National Advertising Division (NAD) and National Advertising Review Board (NARB) as well as trademark, trade secret and copyright litigation. Jen represents clients in a variety of industries, including medical device companies, consumer products companies, cosmetics companies, food and beverage companies, fashion retailers, sports, entertainment and art foundations.

Jen regularly defends clients in threatened and filed consumer class actions. She has successfully helped clients defend cases around the country involving core product performance claims, ingredient claims, slack fill allegations, environmental and other ESG-related claims, pricing disputes, health claims, and allegations of undisclosed PFAS and other contaminants. Jen has extensive experience litigating matters involving foods, drugs, medical devices, dietary supplements and cosmetics, and is proficient on the impact of the regulatory frameworks governing these products on consumer class action defense.

Jen also frequently represents both plaintiffs/challengers and defendants/advertisers in competitor Lanham Act cases and challenges before NAD and NARB. She brings her deep experience in litigation strategy and subject matter expertise to each case to achieve the best possible outcome for her clients.

A core part of Jen’s practice includes counseling clients on advertising and claim substantiation. She leverages her expertise in NAD, regulatory guidance (including the FTC Endorsement Guides, Green Guides and Negative Option Rule), state consumer protection statutes and consumer class action trends to work closely with clients and their marketers to help develop compelling marketing campaigns and messaging while minimizing legal risk. Jen also partners with clients’ R&D teams to help develop robust claim substantiation in accordance with best legal practices, including clinical studies, in vitro testing, sensory studies, home use tests, and consumer and expert surveys.

Jen is a regular speaker at ANA’s Masters of Advertising Law Conference, and is an author and editor of Proskauer’s advertising law blog, Proskauer on Advertising.

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Salvation. The name of two intricate Belgian-style ales, created by us, Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River Brewing and Adam Avery of Avery Brewing. After becoming friends a few years ago, we realized we both had a Salvation in our lineups. Was it going to be a problem? Should one of us relinquish the name rights? “Hell, no!” we said. In fact, it was quickly decided that we should blend the brews to catch the best qualities of each and create an even more complex and rich libation. In April 2004, in a top secret meeting at Russian River Brewing, we came up with the perfect blend of the two Salvations.

That, according to Avery Brewing Co., is how Collaboration Not Litigation Ale came into existence.

But the beer industry is not always so adept at avoiding the courtroom when it comes to trademark disputes.  Particularly with the explosion of the craft brewing industry in recent years, and the ever-increasingly creative names to come out of that market, legal disputes over beer trademarks are a dime a dozen.  The latest of these lawsuits to reach trial resulted in significantly more than a dime’s worth of recovery for craft brewer Stone Brewing.

The great pizza wars of 2021 are not what you might expect. While the courts will never be able to resolve the question of who (or where) makes the best pie, a pair of decisions from the last few weeks did resolve contentious trademark disputes in two of the great pizza destinations of the world, between Patsy’s Pizzeria and Patsy’s Italian Restaurant in New York, and between shareholders of Rosati’s in Illinois.

It is generally understood that trademark law protects against a third party’s use of your mark or a confusingly similar mark to mislead consumers into thinking goods manufactured by someone else were made by your company. But what happens if those goods were in fact made by your company, but you didn’t authorize their sale?  The Eastern District of New York recently answered one version of that question in granting Hallmark summary judgment on its trademark infringement and trademark dilution claims against defendant Dickens, where Dickens obtained twenty trailers of Hallmark greeting cards and related paper products that were intended for destruction, and began to sell them for resale to the public.