Seattle Trademark Lawyer

It’s not a trademark story, but the Seattle Times today has an in-depth feature on Western District Judge Marsha Pechman and how she is likely to run her courtroom in the City of Seattle v. Professional Basketball Club LLC trial — the case that will decide whether the Seattle Supersonics will immediately be moved to Oklahoma City. The article contains good insights about a judge who also decides plenty of trademark cases. Indeed, Judge Pechman was assigned seven new trademark cases in 2007 alone.

Here are a few highlights:

• Judge Pechman, 57, was appointed by President Clinton in 1999, after serving as a King County Superior Court judge for 11 years.
• Before serving as a judge, she worked as a prosecutor, public defender, and partner in a law firm.
• She is a stickler for courtroom efficiency.
• Chief Judge Robert Lasnik is quoted as saying that Judge Pechman sees judges, not lawyers, as the ones responsible for running cases in their courtrooms.
• She often divides trial time between parties, tracking time spent with arguments, witness testimony, and objections down to the minute.
• One attorney who served on the bipartisan panel that selected her for the Western District is quoted as saying: “First impression, people say she’s tough, but my feeling is ‘God love her’ — everybody is going to be held to the same standard.”
• Another attorney who served on the selection panel stated: “She can come off as stern. I don’t think she is stern at all, but she has a sense of decorum and no patience at all for people trying to showboat. She thinks of the courtroom as a very serious place.”
• Judge Lasnik added that no one works harder than Judge Pechman, and no one is “more committed to getting to the right answer.”