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Serving the needs of all families with young children, Carter’s Inc. is the largest North American apparel retailer exclusively for babies and young children, encompassing Carter’s, OshKosh B’gosh, Skip*Hop and Little Planet brands. Meaningful work, constant learning, genuine people, and a community guided by core values that promote inclusion and innovation is in everything we do. There are many reasons to build your career at Carter's.

How you’ll make an impact:

Interested in clothes, toys, and IP? Got a great eye for detail? Put your interests together at Carter’s. Carter’s is seeking a highly motivated IP Manager to review our product and marketing, protect our brands, and assist with our IP portfolio. Ideally, you will have a good understanding of U.S. copyright and trademark law. As an IP Manager, you will be expected to work collaboratively with many business partners including our art, design, and marketing teams, with minimum supervision, and with the opportunity to expand to other areas of law.

This role reports into Vice President & Associate General Counsel Advertising, IP & Commercial Transactions located in our Buckhead, Atlanta, Georgia office.

60%: Product and Marketing Review

• Manage marketing collateral review including digital advertising, direct mail marketing, social media, and retail store signage and use independent judgment to make recommendations to business management regarding possible IP or advertising issues
• Assess and analyze products for all brands; identify potential IP infringement and other product issues and collaborate with respective teams to assess and make recommendations to business management for acceptable alternatives. Review all product packaging tags, and labels, and provide advice and recommendations with respect to IP issues.
• Mitigate negative business impact by providing guidance and education, including trainings, to product development and marketing teams regarding IP use guidelines and acceptable levels of risk to the organization

20%: Brand Protection

• Supervise and instruct third party brand protection vendors and international counsel to enforce and protect the Company’s intellectual property worldwide and to remove infringing uses of the same from marketplaces, social media, and websites
• Manage outside counsel to monitor and remove unauthorized sales of Company’s products and minimum advertised price violations.
• Determine whether authorized resellers of Company’s product comply with Company’s standards

20%: Trademark and Copyrights

• Collaborate with in-house and outside counsel to manage the Company’s global trademark matters, focusing on trademark searching, clearance, prosecution, and maintenance
• Analyze risk associated with words and phrases used on, or in connection with all Company products and marketing collateral, and the availability of new marks and logos through clearance searches.
• Interact with in-house counsel to prepare responses to inquiries and official correspondences from United States Patent and Trademark Office
• Work with internal business partners to obtain documentation of use materials
• Manage the Company’s copyright portfolio, including filing copyright applications and maintaining database records

We’d Love to hear from you if:

Must have:

• Minimum of 8+ years of experience handling a full range of issues related to managing product and marketing clearance and global trademark portfolios, experience with apparel and retail a plus
• Strong working knowledge of U.S. trademark and copyright law
• Ability to work independently with minimum supervision
• Strong organization skills; ability to handle and prioritize multiple projects and manage dockets and deadlines
• Demonstrated experience with all aspects of USPTO trademark work and international trademark prosecution
• Experience managing a brand protection program and Product clearance

Preferred skills and experience:

• Trademark searching and clearance experience
• Bachelor’s degree in a related field or equivalent combination of education and work experience.
• Paralegal certification preferred
• Experience managing direct reports preferred
• Experience with trademark docketing database (CPi preferred), Saegis, CorSearch, and other research/information databases, Word, Excel, PowerPoint

Carters is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, veteran status, or any other status protected by federal, state, or local law.