Katherine R. McMorrow

Kate McMorrow represents a wide range of clients in all aspects of intellectual property and advertising law, including with respect to trademarks, false advertising, unfair competition, copyrights, and patents. Her practice focuses on brand protection and enforcement, from domestic and international trademark selection and searches, prosecution, procurement, and enforcement, to providing legal advice regarding clients’ branding guidelines, press releases, social media marketing, endorsements, and advertising. She also regularly handles intellectual property due diligence associated with mergers and acquisitions and advises clients on intellectual property licenses and assignments, as well as development, distribution, promotion, and marketing agreements.

Kate also represents clients in their intellectual property enforcement and defense. She has extensive experience litigating trademark, trade dress, domain name, false advertising, trade secret, patent, copyright, unfair competition, and contract cases in both federal and state courts and at the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB), Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), and WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center. Kate performs pre-suit investigations and assessments, leads pre-suit enforcement and negotiation efforts, drafts and argues motions, handles all phases of both fact and expert discovery, including depositions, and represents clients through mediations and settlements. She has drafted numerous case-ending pre-trial motions and was also on a litigation team that obtained a change in law at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Kate is active in the legal community, currently serving on the International Trademark Association’s (INTA) Internet Committee and Evolving Technologies Subcommittee, as well as the executive committee of the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s (LACBA) Entertainment and IP Law Section. Kate also previously served on the IP and Innovation Track Project Team for the INTA Annual Meeting in Singapore, as well as on the executive committee of LACBA’s Young Attorney Section and on the Planning Committee for the Young Lawyers Section of the Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles (WLALA). Kate is also the Vice Chair of the Advertising, Media and Entertainment Practice at Knobbe Martens.

Prior to joining Knobbe Martens, Kate was a managing associate at one of the largest multinational law firms in the world as well as an associate at a Chicago-based intellectual property law firm. Kate earned her JD at Boston University School of Law where she was Vice President of the IP Law Society and a staff member of the American Journal of Law & Medicine. During law school Kate also interned at one of the leading food testing companies working on domestic and international acquisitions and at Boston University’s Office of Technology Development researching licensing metrics to optimize IP portfolio management.