In the five years since, the firm has filed more trademarks than any firm in the U.S.īut the firm has lost market share in recent years to LegalZoom, and Abhyanker’s antitrust lawsuit-filed in the U.S.

Trademarkia, which a legal technologist described in 2013 as “the legal web site with the most traffic on the Internet,” was folded into Abhyanker’s firm in 2013. That startup,, provided consumers who wanted to register trademarks with a free search engine to search for words, pictures and marks associated with existing, protected trademarks-and it gave those consumers the option of hiring Abyhanker’s firm for additional legal help. Uniquely, the firm was hatched a sister entity to a tech startup that Abhyanker, a former engineer, established in 2009. “Attorneys who have spent years going through law school, taking a difficult bar exam, maintaining an IOLTA trust account, and performing conflict checks cannot effectively compete against non-law firm competitors like LegalZoom,” the complaint says.Ībhyanker’s focus is the market for patent and trademark filing services, the primary practice area for his Silicon Valley-based firm, LegalForce RAPC Worldwide. It says those entities do so by refusing to subject LegalZoom to ethics rules that govern unauthorized practice, conflicts of interest, nonlawyer assistants and trust accounts-all of which carry huge compliance costs. Patent and Trademark Office and the state bars of Arizona, California and Texas-all of whom are named as “necessary defendants'-of abetting LegalZoom’s monopolistic actions. The 81-page complaint also charges the U.S. Ken Friedman, LegalZoom VP of Legal & Govt.

Legal zoom trademark