Dr. Jeffery Stec is a Managing Director, a leader of Berkeley Research Group’s Intellectual Property practice, and a co-leader of its Economics & Damages community. He has worked extensively over the last 17 years in the areas of antitrust, finance, intellectual property, and survey research, as both a consulting expert and an expert witness. His engagements typically involve the application of economic, financial, statistical, and survey research theory to the collection and analysis of data to evaluate the economic impact of decisions made by consumers and firms. In the area of intellectual property, Dr. Stec has conducted economic and econometric analyses to determine the value of IP and the amount of economic damages resulting from patent, trademark, trade secret, or copyright infringement. He has also evaluated the effects of anticompetitive conduct as it relates to the use of IP. In the context of trademarks and trade dress, he has evaluated economic and survey research related issues with secondary meaning, genericness, dilution, and likelihood of confusion. He has also determined economic damages and evaluated survey research issues in false advertising and counterfeit claims.

Laura O’Laughlin is a vice president at Analysis Group, a leading economics consulting firm that provides economics expertise and strategy to top law firms, Fortune Global 500 companies, and government agencies worldwide. Ms. O’Laughlin specializes in intellectual property and competition matters. She has worked on a number of trademark infringement and misleading advertisement cases across a variety of industries, including smartphones, airline, online technologies, retail, consumer electronics, restaurant, and insurance. She has extensive experience in the development, administration, and analysis of surveys in and intellectual property, false advertising, consumer protection, and antitrust matters. Ms. O’Laughlin regularly writes on issues related to the validity and admissibility of surveys in litigation, and is bilingual in both official languages of Canada, French and English. She received her masters in economics from the Université de Montréal.

Ms. Whitsett is a Senior Consultant based in NERA Economic Consulting’s Washington, DC office. She is an expert in survey research and methodology, statistical sampling and custom data analysis and has applied this expertise across a wide range of consulting projects and litigation cases.

In her survey research work, she has worked extensively on matters involving intellectual property disputes, including trademark, trade dress, and false advertising cases. Her trademark-related work includes designing and conducting studies to measure or establish likelihood of confusion, secondary meaning, genericness, and dilution. She is also experienced with choice-based studies designed to value patented product features.