With more than 30 years of experience, Deborah Wilcox heads the firm’s national Trademark and Copyright team and is a go-to international intellectual property (IP) attorney and first-chair litigator. Deborah concentrates on clearing, registering, monetizing and enforcing trademarks, domain names and copyrights. She is a strategic adviser to clients, structuring IP deals and adapting her legal advice to evolving technologies such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), mobile apps and social media sites. Deborah works with clients to understand their risk tolerance and develop practical strategies and best practices suited to their goals, including filing civil lawsuits against counterfeiters. She is also the Intellectual Property Leader for the Cleveland office.
Highly regarded in her field, Deborah is listed in Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business in the area of Intellectual Property, where she is noted as having “significant skill in acting for market-leading clients in complex trademark and copyright matters. She is also noted for her expertise in the social media sector.” Market sources say “She is great: reasonable, practical, hard-working and smart.” (Chambers USA 2019). She has also been named an “IP Star” by Managing Intellectual Property magazine, as well as in “IP Stars – Top 250 Women in IP.” Deborah has been named in World Trademark Review’s WTR 1000 since 2014, where she has been described as "a truly extraordinary lawyer with skills spanning litigation, prosecution and licensing. She’s the ideal person to turn to whenever facing a particularly complex or messy trademark matter...Her business acumen and understanding of her clients’ risk profiles is outstanding, as is her appreciation of budgetary needs. A dedicated advocate who is resourceful, creative and well connected...and creates tremendous value always with a practical eye on the bottom line." (WTR 1000 2023). Deborah also has served as a mediator in a trademark dispute.