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William E. Levin’s unique experience includes legal services in diverse fields and industries ranging from food and beverage, real estate, entertainment, apparel, and finance, to music, art, publishing, automotive, and many others. Renowned for his expertise in intellectual property law, including trademarks and related litigation, Mr. Levin has worked on such interesting legal issues and clients as the Irvine’s Company’s drive to protect the name Newport Coast, counterfeits of the Izod Alligator, original photography of Elvis Presley, the naming rights to the world-famous 17-mile Drive in Pebble Beach, CA, the use of Bob Marley’s image on skim boards, and trademark disputes with CitiBank.
Prior to founding Levin & Dicterow, William E. Levin was the founding partner and attorney in leading national intellectual property law firms Levin & Hawes, Levin & O’Connor, and Levin Intellectual Property Group.. He was also a partner in the law firms of One LLP; Cooper, White & Cooper; Flehr, Hohbach, and Test, Albritton & Herbert. He was Of Counsel to Goldstein & Phillips , to Hawes & Fischer in Newport Beach. He is admitted to practice before all California courts, numerous federal courts throughout the country, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Federal Circuit, and the United States Patent and Trademark Office. He was formerly a member of the Florida Bar, and is a member of the California Bar.
Mr. Levin’s clients have included American Airlines, American Express, American Medical Inc. (AMI), Applied Medical, Inc., Bank of America, the British government, CitiFinancial,, the Coca-Cola Co., Dial Soap, Fila, Foster Farms, Gibraltar Savings & Loan Assoc., Hansen’s Beverage Co., Hard Rock Café, Izod, Kaiser-Permanente, Laura Ashley, McKesson Corp., the San Francisco Chronicle, See’s Candies, Sony, Sonoma Mission Inn, The Laguna Beach Pageant of the Masters, Safeway Stores, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Thompson-Brandt, Unilever, Wells Fargo Bank, Winterland Productions, and Wrangler Jeans, among many others, including a plethora of small businesses and corporations.
Mr. Levin has extensive litigation experience in trademark, trade dress, copyright, unfair competition, and false advertising cases, particularly temporary restraining orders, preliminary injunctions, depositions and trials. He has handled trademark prosecution and inter partes proceedings before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board and represented Fortune 100 corporations and numerous small businesses in a variety of industries.
The author of a leading trademark treatise, Trade Dress Protection, now in a second edition and published by Thomson Reuters & West, Mr. Levin has served on the Advisory Board of United States Patents Quarterly (Bureau of National Affairs), the Editorial Boards of Trademark Reporter (INTA), Trademark World®, and San Francisco Attorney magazines, the Advisory Board of Whittier Law School and the Executive Committee of the Los Angeles Complex Inns of Court. Mr. Levin served as a Committee Chair of the American Bar Association, Patent, Trademark and Copyright Section and as an editor for one of its publications. He has been a moot court judge, a visiting law professor, an arbitrator for such groups as the American Arbitration Association, a mediator,j and has very successfully represented clients in all forms of Alternative Dispute Resolution.
Mr. Levin has worked with small and large law firms around the country as their co-counsel, local counsel, or as a consultant. He has been retained many times as an expert witness in the field of trademark and trade dress law and related intellectual property law matters. He has been a member of the International Trademark Association, the American Intellectual Property Law Association, the American Bar Association, the State Bar of California (and its Intellectual Property Section), and the Orange County Patent Law Association, among other professional associations. He holds the top legal rating, “AV,” from the Martindale-Hubble Law Directory, as did his various law firms.
Concurrent with his legal career, Mr. Levin has been a real estate broker in California from about 1986 through 2010, and has owned properties around the country, including California, Florida, Oregon, Arkansas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Founder and CEO of Levin Real Estate, and Levin Real Estate Investments, he has experience with tenant in common ownership and real estate partnerships, has renovated numerous buildings, including single family homes and multi-unit buildings, managed properties, converted apartment buildings into condominiums, split lots, and overseen land partitions. Mr. Levin has also handled financing and refinancing and related loan transactions, and has been actively involved in litigation regarding related issues. Mr. Levin has also been a referring source for many other loan transactions.
Mr. Levin’s numerous legal and business articles have appeared in national and international publications including National Law Journal, Orange County Business Journal, Laguna Beach News, (columnist), San Francisco Attorney and Trademark World. He has also appeared on local and national television programs, and on various radio programs, and was asked to be. on Court TV. Mr. Levin has spoken before numerous industry organizations including the American Bar Association, the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition, the National Business Institute, the Orange County Bar Association, the San Francisco Bar Association, and the Orange County Patent Law Association. His cases have been featured in major newspapers and leading industry publications worldwide, including Wall St. Journal, Investor’s Daily, New York Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, and USA Today.
An active community leader, Mr. Levin has served on the Regional Board of Directors for the Long Beach & Orange County chapter of the Anti-Defamation League, the Board of Directors of Laguna Beach Outreach Community Arts, the Administrative Board of Californians for Missing Children, the Board of Trustees of Congregation Shir Ha Ma’a lot, and numerous other groups. He was named a Republican of the Year in California by the National Republican Congressional Committee in 2003 and was nominated for the Orange County Business Journal’s Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2002.
Mr. Levin received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from Emory University and Juris Doctor from the University of Miami Law School. He was born in Miami, Florida and lives in Orange County, California and Gouldsboro, Maine.