As Kevin O’Keefe reports in his blog, one of the granddaddies of the attorney ratings business has started to charge for the publication of its ratings.

As background information on the ratings, Martindale-Hubbell states on its website:

“A cooperative effort with the legal profession

Peer Review Ratings are established by lawyers. The legal community respects the accuracy of Ratings because it knows that its own members — the people best suited to assess their peers — are directly involved in the process.”

jenkline75 asked:


My husband and I are starting a business and wanted to trademark our product name. After researching we found that there is another business (which we believe is no longer doing business) in another part of the country who is doing or attempted to do the same sort of thing that we are. The business names are very different but the actual product name is very close (ex. ABC Card vs. ABC Rewards Card). We had no idea that this other business had this name registered until we did the search. We have not started doing business yet but are very disappointed and are afraid that the trademark application would be rejected. We read that it takes 6 mos – a year to hear back from the Trademark office. We don’t want to start doing business with that product name now and then find out down the road that we are infringing on a TM. We have been brainstorming on a new name but really love our first choice way more than anything else we’ve come up with. Any Advice???