News | February 12, 2025
Carrie Distler provided expert reports and trial testimony on behalf of San Diego craft brewer Stone Brewing in a trademark infringement suit against the maker of Keystone Light, Molson Coors.
Specializing in intellectual property disputes and management involving patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets, Ms. Distler uses her economic, financial, and statistical expertise in various litigation and non-litigation related matters. She has been regularly ranked in the IAM Patent 1000, the industry's leading list of patent professionals, and Who's Who Legal's Expert Witness and IP Expert lists.
Chicago
Ms. Distler has more than 20 years of professional experience in consulting and uses her economic, financial, and statistical expertise in various litigation and non-litigation related matters. She is seasoned in providing expert testimony related to damages in both jury trials and arbitrations. Ms. Distler has been identified for the last nine years as a leading patent litigation expert witness in the IAM Patent 1000 – The World’s Leading Patent Professionals guide. Ms. Distler was also named to the Who’s Who Legal: Commercial Litigation Expert Witnesses for 2021 through 2023 and Who’s Who Legal: IP Experts for 2023.
Ms. Distler specializes in intellectual property disputes and management, involving patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets. In the litigation context, she has performed numerous reasonable royalty, lost profit, and disgorgement calculations and valued technology across many industries (e.g., wireless communication, smartphone, pharmaceutical/biotechnology, software, telematics, medical device, automotive and heavy equipment, consumer products, financial services, and others). Ms. Distler also has provided market research for use in licensing transactions, identifying potential infringers of technologies, and conducting royalty audits.
Her reasonable royalty assessments have included complex financial and cost analyses to derive measures of value for patented features, use of comparable licenses to determine royalty rates (including FRAND agreements in standards setting industries), and competitive market evaluations to ascertain impacts of the patented features. Ms. Distler has performed lost profits analyses addressing damage issues pertaining to price erosion, market definition and share allocation, and convoyed sales. Additionally, she has determined royalty amounts and other damages owed resulting from alleged breaches of license or settlement agreements. She has also managed large, patent enforcement actions involving multiple defendants.
Ms. Distler has worked extensively in the life sciences space. She possesses an in-depth knowledge and understanding of the pharmaceutical markets from her experience in providing liability and damage analyses related to average wholesale price and opioid litigation across multiple jurisdictions, including the roles and policies of generic and branded developers, manufacturers, wholesalers, pharmacies, and third-party payors. Ms. Distler has provided expert opinions related to damages and secondary considerations of non-obviousness for pharmaceuticals, biopharmaceuticals, and medical devices. Her damages opinions have included both lost profits and reasonable royalties. She has analyzed pre-clinical, clinical, and approved therapies for treating cancers, neurodegenerative diseases, and other diseases. In the medical device area, Ms. Distler has worked for the leading medical device companies for products in the endovascular, orthopedic, cardiac, and ophthalmic spaces. She has also valued technology for licensing and venture capital raising purposes.
In addition to her intellectual property expertise, Ms. Distler has also worked on forensic investigations, business valuations, shareholder disputes, wrongful terminations, and other labor-related matters, econometric and statistical cases, and other general commercial litigation matters.
Carrie Distler provided expert reports and trial testimony on behalf of San Diego craft brewer Stone Brewing in a trademark infringement suit against the maker of Keystone Light, Molson Coors.
Secretariat Experts Receive Recognition in Lexology Index Thought Leaders – USA 2025
Secretariat is proud to announce that 13 Secretariat experts have been recognized by Lexology Index (formerly Who’s Who Legal) as USA Thought Leaders in its 2025 rankings.
Secretariat and Nine Experts Recognized in the 2024 IAM Patent 1000
Nine Secretariat intellectual property experts have been recognized as leading patent litigation expert witnesses in the eleventh edition of the IAM Patent 1000.