Consulting
AI-Related Trademark & Federal Unfair Competition Risk Consulting
AI is changing how people find, compare, and buy products and services. Trademark and federal unfair competition risks can arise across that path.
Tailored IP Solutions helps businesses evaluate potential trademark and federal unfair competition liability arising from AI-powered search, marketing, and sales, including generative and agentic systems. The firm develops practical measures aligned with each business’s operations, priorities, and risk tolerance.
Established Law, New Applications
Emerging technologies often require businesses to apply established legal rules to facts that courts have not yet addressed. AI is not the first technology to create that problem. The pace of AI development and adoption, however, makes the problem especially urgent and spreads the same questions across search, marketing, and sales.
Depending on the deployment, the analysis may draw from (1) U.S. federal, state, and common-law trademark rules, (2) federal unfair competition claims under the Lanham Act, including false advertising and false endorsement, and (3) applicable foreign trademark regimes. Where the facts require a broader view, the analysis can also account for AI governance frameworks such as the European Union Artificial Intelligence Act (“EU AI Act”) and identify when local counsel should address a jurisdiction-specific question.
Earlier disputes involving online search, digital advertising, and online marketplaces offer analogies rather than a ready-made framework. Each assessment must determine (1) which authorities apply, (2) where the analogy breaks down, and (3) how a business can prepare for the grey areas that remain.
The work can follow AI across the full technology chain, from model development to commercial deployment. The relevant question is not whether a tool is consumer-facing or sits within a particular department. The question is how a business develops, supplies, integrates, or uses AI in connection with search, marketing, or sales.
Where Risk Concentrates
Risk commonly concentrates in three commercial functions. Generative and agentic AI can affect each function in different ways.
AI-Powered Search & Discovery.
Generative search and answer tools can provide inaccurate information about a product, service, or brand, use another party’s mark in a confusing way, or blur distinctions among source, sponsorship, and affiliation. Recommendation systems and agentic tools can also determine which offering a person or purchasing agent sees or selects. Generative engine optimization (“GEO”) and answer engine optimization (“AEO”) can influence how AI systems describe, rank, or recommend offerings. Those strategies raise additional questions about who is responsible for the resulting statements and whether factual claims have adequate support.
AI-Generated Marketing & Advertising.
Generative tools can incorporate another party’s mark, make unsupported product or service claims, or imply an endorsement that no one gave. Agentic tools can select audiences, place content, and modify campaigns with limited human review. GEO and AEO strategies can also function as marketing when a business publishes material designed to shape generated answers and recommendations.
AI-Driven Sales.
Generative systems may answer pre-purchase questions, compare offerings, or make representations on a seller’s behalf. Agentic systems may select, negotiate, or purchase products and services for a user, including through agent-to-agent communications at the point of sale. Representations made to a person or purchasing agent can create trademark or federal unfair competition exposure for the business responsible for the sales process.
How Tailored IP Evaluates and Reduces Risk
The consulting practice evaluates (1) the type of potential liability, (2) the likelihood and potential impact of each risk, and (3) practical measures that can reduce the risk. The analysis follows the relevant facts across the technology and the surrounding business practices rather than stopping at product design or a single department. Recommendations can address the technology itself as well as governance, review procedures, contracts, documentation, and commercial practices.
The firm’s legal practice represents clients in defined trademark and copyright matters. The consulting practice focuses on preventive assessment and practical solutions before a specific claim or dispute arises.
Tailored IP does not treat existing precedent as a complete framework for AI. The firm evaluates which earlier decisions genuinely apply, identifies where established rules offer only partial guidance, and develops practical options for the unsettled areas. Rather than impose one answer, Tailored IP equips decision-makers to choose among defensible options in light of the business’s approach, priorities, and risk tolerance.
Consulting Engagements
An Exploratory Consultation provides orientation when the scope is not yet clear.
The paid consultation answers preliminary questions and helps the business determine whether deeper review would add value. The consultation can stand on its own and does not require an audit or follow-on project.
An AI Trademark & Federal Unfair Competition Exposure Audit maps risk across the business.
The audit reviews how the business develops or uses generative and agentic AI in search, marketing, and sales. The final assessment identifies where exposure concentrates and provides prioritized recommendations.
A Scoped Risk Assessment or Advisory Memo answers a defined question.
The engagement addresses an emerging or unsettled issue in a deliverable suited to a launch decision, feature review, vendor evaluation, or another specific business need.
A Pre-Market or Investor-Facing Risk Evaluation identifies material risk and proposed safeguards.
The documented assessment can support product or service launches, diligence, and fundraising without treating those business events as separate bodies of law.
Advisory for AI and Legal-Tech Teams translates liability risk into implementation choices.
The engagement evaluates how the use of AI in a product or service could expose the provider, a business customer, or a user to trademark or federal unfair competition liability. The recommendations may address features, claims, workflows, safeguards, and launch decisions.
Each engagement follows the business’s actual question, stage of deployment, and desired depth of analysis. No single format serves as the presumed starting point.
Research Behind the Practice
Tailored IP is publishing a five-part white paper series on trademark and Lanham Act liability across the AI technology chain, from the companies that build foundational models to the autonomous agents that now complete purchases. Each paper maps who can be liable at one layer, explains how established law applies, isolates the open questions, and sets out practical controls. Read the series overview.
Discuss a Consulting Engagement
A business seeking preliminary orientation can request a paid Exploratory Consultation. A business with a defined need may request an exposure audit, scoped assessment, advisory memo, or risk evaluation directly.