Peter J. Riebling devotes his practice to the management, litigation and licensing of intellectual property rights.
Mr. Riebling is especially involved in all aspects of trademarks, domestic and foreign. He has extensive experience with client counseling, trademark clearance, due diligence, audits, prosecution before the United States Patent and Trademark Office, cease and desist enforcement, litigation at federal court and at the
Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, domain name arbitrations, global branding policies and strategies, and with licensing, settlement, co-existence and co-branding agreements. His experience also includes trade secret theft litigation, software licenses and enforcing rights in social media.
In 2011, Mr. Riebling was identified by
World Trademark Review as among the top 25 trademark practitioners in Washington, D.C., for contentious trademark actions. Mr. Riebling represented Cellular One Group in 2000 in
Cellular One Group v. Paul Brien, the first UDRP ruling that no use of a domain name can constitute use of a domain name in "bad faith," cited over 2,000 times in WIPO Panelist Decisions. In 1994, he co-authored a U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief filed by Dr Pepper/Seven Up, Inc. in
Qualitex Corp. v. Jacobson Products Co. on the successful issue of whether color may be subject to trademark protection. He provided testimony to the Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property prior to passage of the Federal Trademark Dilution Act, and has been a featured speaker for the District of Columbia Bar on "inevitable disclosure" in trade secret theft cases.
Mr. Riebling received his bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1987, and his Juris Doctor from Southwestern Law School in 1992. Prior to graduating from law school, he worked at the White House Office of National Service and served as campaign manager for a U.S. Senate election. Mr. Riebling previously was an equity partner at Arter & Hadden LLP, where he was the partner in charge of associates in Washington, D.C.
Mr. Riebling is admitted to practice in California (inactive), the District of Columbia and Virginia, as well as before the U.S. Supreme Court, the United States Courts of Appeals for the Fourth, Ninth, D.C. and Federal Circuits, and the U.S. District Courts for California, the Eastern District of Virginia and the District of Columbia.