Most founders treat their trademark like a lock on the front door. File it, renew it every ten years, and call a lawyer if someone tries to copy your logo.
Elliott Alderman has spent more than four decades watching companies leave serious money on the table by thinking exactly that way.
“Defensive trademark strategy is necessary,” Elliott says. “But it’s only half the picture. The other half is understanding what you actually own – and what that ownership is worth to other people.”
Elliott brings a perspective to trademark strategy that few IP attorneys can match. He spent years at the U.S. Copyright Office drafting policy decisions and legal memoranda on domestic and international intellectual property issues. He served as general counsel for a 200-person media publishing company, overseeing content licensing and IP portfolio management. He holds a Martindale-Hubbell AV Preeminent rating – the highest available – and has been recognized by Super Lawyers. His practice has focused exclusively on intellectual property, entertainment, and technology law for more than 40 years.
That background shapes how he approaches trademark portfolios for the companies he works with today. And the pattern he sees is consistent: founders who understand the offensive side of trademark strategy create distribution opportunities, partnership leverage, and licensing revenue that their competitors never see coming.
Here is what that actually looks like in practice.
The Defensive-Only Trap
Imagine a consumer products company with a well-recognized brand in its regional market. The founder filed trademarks on the core brand name and product line years ago. Renewals are up to date. The legal box is checked.
Then a regional distributor in a new market approaches them about carrying the line. The distributor wants to co-brand some of its marketing materials. The founder says yes, informally, because the deal looks good and the relationship feels solid.
Eighteen months later, the distributor has built its own customer relationships under a co-branded identity that incorporates the founder’s mark. When the distribution agreement ends, the question of who owns what becomes genuinely complicated.
This is not a hypothetical edge case. Elliott has seen versions of this scenario across industries. The problem is not that the founder made a bad business decision. The problem is that trademark strategy was never connected to business development decisions in the first place.
“When trademark work happens in isolation – as a filing task disconnected from how the company is actually growing – you end up with gaps,” Elliott explains. “Licensing terms that were never written. Rights that were granted informally. Situations where your own mark is being used in ways you didn’t fully anticipate.”
What a Licensing-Oriented Strategy Looks Like
A proactive trademark strategy starts with a different question. Instead of asking “how do we protect this mark,” it asks “what could this mark enable?”
For companies with distribution ambitions or recognizable brand assets, the answers tend to fall into three categories.
Distribution partnerships with explicit license terms. When a partner wants to carry your products into a new market or geography, they often want to use your brand in their local marketing. That usage is a license. It should be documented as one – with clear boundaries on how the mark can be used, in what channels, for how long, and what happens to any brand equity built under that usage when the partnership ends. A well-drafted licensing agreement protects your mark while giving the partner the flexibility they need to sell effectively. Done right, it can also include royalty structures that create direct revenue from the partner’s use of your brand.
Co-marketing agreements with IP terms built in. Co-marketing deals between companies in adjacent categories are common at the growth stage. Two brands running a joint campaign, a product integration with a partner platform, a bundled offer that puts both logos in front of a shared audience. These deals move fast and often get documented as simple marketing agreements. But when your brand is being used in someone else’s marketing, IP terms matter: usage rights, approval rights over how the mark appears, and termination provisions that ensure your brand comes back cleanly when the campaign ends.
Platform and channel deals where your brand is the licensable asset. For companies with strong brand recognition, the brand itself can become a revenue line in platform or channel deals. A retailer that wants exclusivity in a category. A platform that wants to feature your brand as part of its offering. A licensing partner who wants to extend your brand into an adjacent product category. These structures require trademark strategy that goes beyond protection – they require understanding what your mark is worth as a standalone asset and how to price and structure that value.
Why This Requires IP Counsel Inside the Business
The reason most companies never develop this kind of strategy is structural. When IP counsel is external and engaged on a project basis, trademark work happens reactively. A renewal comes up, a filing gets submitted, a cease-and-desist arrives and gets handled. The attorney never sees the distribution deal being negotiated until someone asks “do we need a licensing agreement here?”
By then, the informal usage has already started.
When an IP specialist like Elliott is embedded in a company’s operations as part of a fractional counsel arrangement, the dynamic changes. Trademark strategy becomes part of business development conversations, not a separate track that runs in parallel and occasionally intersects.
“I want to know about distribution conversations early,” Elliott says. “Not because every deal needs a complicated licensing agreement, but because the terms are much easier to structure before the relationship starts than after it’s already operating informally.”
That integration is exactly what the Premium tier at Garcia-Zamor is designed to support. Elliott’s IP expertise works alongside business counsel to make sure that as the company grows, its trademark portfolio is being built as a strategic asset – not just a defensive one.
The founders who build the most valuable IP portfolios are not necessarily the ones who file the most trademarks. They are the ones who understand what each mark enables, structure their partnerships accordingly, and treat licensing as a revenue strategy from the beginning.
If you have a trademark portfolio and you are starting to think about distribution partnerships, co-marketing deals, or brand licensing – what questions are you running into? Drop them in the comments. Elliott reads these, and the answers are usually more straightforward than founders expect.
About Garcia-Zamor: We’re the fractional general counsel for innovators – protecting both your business operations and your intellectual property. Ruy Garcia-Zamor leads business growth strategy, Elliott Alderman (former Copyright Office attorney, 40+ years IP expertise) handles intellectual property, and Claudia Castillo specializes in employment law. Contact us at garcia-zamor.com or (410) 531-9853.
