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CALL THE MAKERS OF VITAMINWATER in Queens, New York, and a recorded female voice that sounds strikingly similar to Fran Drescher's in The Nanny asks if you're thirsty. "Well, you're in luck," she says. "The girls at the beauty parlor say the stuff works miracles. Maybe it's because the products are totally natural, which is certainly more than I can say about some of the celebrities I see drinking it."

Celebrities, or at least their good looks, may not be totally "natural," but their endorsements have helped make VitaminWater a hit in today's highly competitive soft beverage market. Glacéau, the company that makes the fruity "enhanced" water, has spent millions on marketing and advertising to make sure the public sees those celebrities drinking it. And some companies might hesitate to tease the people who have fueled their products' popularity. Not Glacéau. The company's success was built on aggressive, edgy marketing strategies. They were so successful, with triple-digit sales increases, that The Coca-Cola Company bought Glacéau in 2007 for $4.1 billion-the largest acquisition in the soda giant's history.

But as VitaminWater's popularity and distribution grows, so does the number of would-be imitators. The company's small but feisty legal department may not be able to stop competitors from bottling and selling flavored, brightly colored water mixed with vitamins. But it can-and does-stop them from selling products that imitate too closely VitaminWater's distinctive two-toned labels with a horizontal color band and its 20-ounce, bell-shaped bottle.

Keeping it Real: Glacéau vows to keep its unique culture.

"There's nothing more important to this company than its intellectual property," says general counsel Joseph DiSalvo. "Nothing."

In fact, Glacéau hasn't lost a trademark case yet. Last year its legal team even forced a company to stop selling a knock-off product before it was launched nationwide. DiSalvo attributes that success to his legal team's quick, aggressive responses in court, as well as its ability to choose its battles wisely.

Legal experts agree that Glacéau's recent victories are a real accomplishment. Proving in court that a company has ripped off another product's packaging isn't easy. The legal standards protecting trademarked product designs vary from court to court, and judges can interpret those standards quite differently. "The cases are hard to win, and expensive," says Lara Holzman, an attorney who practices trademark litigation for Alston & Bird in New York (but not for Glacéau). "They've done very well for themselves."

GLACÉAU HAD MANAGED its legal affairs without a general counsel until 2006, when it hired DiSalvo. It took years for Mike Repole, the company's former president, to convince the now 36-year-old attorney to join the growing company.

The two grew up playing basketball and stickball in the playgrounds of Middle Village, Queens. That friendship didn't end when they became adults with families and careers of their own. "Mike and I spent the first 20 years of our friendship competing, and the last ten congratulating each other on our success," DiSalvo says.

As adults, it was DiSalvo's legal skills-not his prowess on the basketball court-that had become the hot commodity Repole wanted on his team. Repole had already hired several other longtime friends from Queens, such as John Camus, former vice president of operations, and Joseph Serventi, director of field development. So every few months, when DiSalvo and Repole got together to play touch football or just talk, Repole would make his pitch again. "It was about believing in attitude," Repole says. "I knew I had a close-knit group of friends who were extremely competitive, driven, and passionate. We could do really big things together."

DiSalvo says he resisted Repole's overtures initially because he was happy as a new partner at McCarter & English. He and another attorney had just opened the firm's first Manhattan office. At McCarter, he handled a wide range of legal issues, from labor and employment suits to product liability cases. But DiSalvo finally changed his mind when Glacéau raked in revenues of more than $300 million in 2005 after selling more than 225 million bottles of VitaminWater. And he says he's never looked back. "Obviously, the company had a future," DiSalvo says.

IT'S CLEAR THAT VitaminWater has found a lucrative niche. In 2007 VitaminWater generated more than $700 million in sales for Glacéau, which commanded 34 percent of the enhanced beverage market, according to Beverage Digest, an industry newsletter. The company expects that in 2008 VitaminWater sales will have topped $1 billion.

As the company's profits have grown, so have the responsibilities of its legal department. Last year DiSalvo brought in another Queens native, Brian Howard, as his associate general counsel. He also has a part-time IP attorney and a paralegal on staff.

Much of their time is spent working with the sales, marketing, and advertising staffs. The legal team helps handle all the contracts for the celebrities who endorse VitaminWater, such as Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, Kobe Bryant, and David Ortiz. And it helped put together a deal with rapper 50 Cent that allowed him to create his own flavor and then invest in the company; he made millions when Coca-Cola bought Glacéau. They also review and help negotiate contracts when VitaminWater is given out at high-profile events such as the Super Bowl, the World Series, and the Academy Awards. And the legal department reviews all the company's promotional materials to make sure no legal issues could arise later.

But more than half of the legal team's time is spent protecting Glacéau's most important asset: VitaminWater's distinctive, trademarked packaging. With little to distinguish it from other bottled enhanced waters, in terms of flavor or concept, VitaminWater's packaging has played a huge role in setting it apart from the competition. Its labels are indeed eye-catching, which helps consumers overlook the fact that one bottle has nearly the same number of calories as a can of Coca-Cola Classic. They have a sleek, minimalist design with bright bands of pink, purple, yellow, or red, along with the brand name running vertically in a clean, simple font.

They're are also funny. Labels are adorned with cheeky odes to the celebrities who drink them, or who created their own flavors. "Who wouldn't want to live large like 50?" asks the label on the VitaminWater flavor that 50 Cent created. "That's just how he rolls." The labels even use humor to remind drinkers to be earth-friendly: "30 may be the new 20, but green is definitely the new black. Please recycle."

"It's really a pretty entertaining read, and you're going to want to protect that," says Van Beckwith, a partner at Baker Botts whose practice specializes in beverage litigation. "As you think about the battle for shelf space, having a trade dress that stands out, that's interesting and fresh, is what's going to attract consumer interest."

Getting coveted space on supermarket and deli shelves has been key to grabbing customers' attention. Glacéau marketers convinced grocery stores and delis to display VitaminWater's colorful bottles side-by-side on rows and rows of shelves. "It took years and lots of hard work to get the amount of retail space we currently have, and we had tons of resistance from the retailers across the board," Repole says. "Luckily, it was the packaging that popped and . . . got the consumer and ultimately retailer attention."

MAKING SURE other companies don't imitate those labels or the bottle design isn't just DiSalvo's job. Every new hire is trained to recognize when another product looks too much like the Glacéau brand, DiSalvo says. He often finds out about possible trademark infringement from salespeople who take pictures of alleged offenders with their cell phones and send them to DiSalvo.

DiSalvo needs all the help he can get to quickly resolve trademark issues. He works closely with his outside counsel to decide which cases should be litigated and which should be settled out of court. "Unfortunately, that's the nature of popularity," says David Bernstein, a partner at Debevoise & Plimpton who has litigated Glacéau's trademark cases since 2002. "Other products will always try to get a free ride on your brand."

DiSalvo and Bernstein work out Glacéau's strategy together if they decide to sue a would-be copycat, which has happened about a dozen times since Bernstein started working with Glacéau. The company has received favorable court decisions or competitors have agreed to settle in all those cases, most of which were filed in the Southern District of New York.

The team may be aggressive about taking the competition to court, and winning. But DiSalvo and Bernstein pick their battles carefully. Many of the trademark issues that arise with competitors are resolved before they go to court, DiSalvo says. The cases they do litigate are "just the tip of the iceberg," DiSalvo says.

Glacéau is careful about which trademark cases it litigates because they're difficult and expensive to win. U.S. trademark law under the Lanham Act protects a product's distinctive packaging and design, which falls under the rubric of "trade dress." But a company has to prove that an average person would be confused if another product appeared in similar dress. Therefore, the more distinctive a product's trade dress is, the easier it is to protect, says Rochelle Alpert, a partner in Morgan, Lewis & Bockius's intellectual property practice and a member of its trademark copyright advertising group in San Francisco. It also helps if those elements are registered with the Patent and Trademark Office.

Even though Glacéau has registered both VitaminWater's name and label design, there's no guarantee it can prove trademark infringement in court. The U.S. Supreme Court and the federal courts have never set a universal standard for what makes a product's trade dress distinctive. That means that rulings are often based on subjective and competing interpretations.

Eternal vigilance is the price of protecting a valuable brand. Being aggressive about protecting a trademark is just smart business, Alpert says. "If you let things go," she says, "it can be much more difficult to go after people in the future."

DESPITE THE UNSETTLED state of trade dress doctrine, Glacéau hasn't been afraid to challenge some of the country's largest beverage companies in court-even before it was able to call upon the resources of Coca-Cola. One of Glacéau's first big victories for the VitaminWater brand came in 2006 against PepsiCo, Inc., and its subsidiary, South Beach Beverage Company, Inc. (SoBe). When Glacéau filed the suit, it had already won injunctions to stop the sale of the brands Enhance and Arizona Wateraid+ because they looked too much like VitaminWater.

Then Pepsi introduced an enhanced water product called Life Water. Glacéau immediately sued in federal court in Manhattan, calling it a "slavish knock-off" of VitaminWater. Life Water's bottle had the same shape, the same colored water, the same two-toned label with a brand name written in alternating bold and normal font, and the same clear plastic cap, the company claimed.

To confuse consumers even further, the two brands were mixed together on store shelves. Whether deliberate or accidental, their placement increased "the likelihood that consumers will purchase Life Water products when they mean to purchase VitaminWater products," Glacéau argued in court. Pepsi agreed to dramatically change Life Water's packaging before the court ruled.

Imitators aren't always peddling enhanced water for humans. That same year, a federal court in Manhattan stopped Virginia-based Maw & Paw Specialty Pet Foods from selling PetVitaminWater, a nutrient-enhanced bottled water for dogs. "Maw & Paw did nothing more than add the word 'pet' to Glacéau's VitaminWater trademark," the court said. Even the ingredients were the same, the court said.

Imitators aren't always selling water, either. Perhaps the most egregious and blatant attempt to profit from VitaminWater's success involves VitaminShampoo products, sold by Vogue International, says Glacéau's legal team. In September 2008, Florida-based Vogue was preparing to launch the nutrient-enhanced shampoo when Bernstein's teenage daughter showed him an ad for VitaminShampoo in a fashion magazine and asked when VitaminWater had started making shampoo. "I almost fell off my seat," Bernstein says. "I couldn't believe it."

Glacéau quickly sued in federal court in Manhattan. Often the legal team orders a "likelihood of confusion" survey to see if consumers believe a competitor's product is actually produced by Glacéau. It surveyed consumers to help prove in 2008 that spiritualwater, a bottled water enhanced with electrolytes made by Spiritual Brands, Inc., of Florida looked too much like another Glacéau brand of enhanced water, smartwater. A federal judge in Manhattan not only granted a permanent injunction to stop the sale of spiritualwater in its then-current packaging, it ordered Spiritual Brands to pay Glacéau $300,000 in damages and attorneys' fees.

DiSalvo and Bernstein decided that they didn't have time to conduct a consumer survey about VitaminShampoo. Besides, the similarities were obvious to anyone, they say. The brand name ran vertically down the label, just like VitaminWater's, and in the same font, according to court documents. It had the same small, horizontal print on the label describing the benefits of added vitamins.

In October 2008 the judge granted a permanent injunction that ordered Vogue to stop selling VitaminShampoo products in that form and to destroy or relabel all the bottles that it had warehoused. "There was no question, we were going to win this one," DiSalvo says.

TODAY, GLACÉAU HAS a world of competitors to worry about, thanks to the power of Coca-Cola's global reach. The company now sells VitaminWater in Great Britain, Australia, Canada, and Mexico, overseas markets that it would have had a tough time reaching on its own.

DiSalvo has to report more information to corporate headquarters in Atlanta, such as updates about Glacéau's intellectual properties and filings with the Patent and Trademark Office, which adds a layer of complexity to his job. But, for the most part, Glacéau's legal department still operates independently. "Coca-Cola didn't come in to fix anything," DiSalvo says.

Still, being part of Coca-Cola has some advantages for DiSalvo's team. Now they have access to colleagues who can help manage the trademark portfolio and help joust with other dragons too.

DiSalvo is working with lawyers at Coca-Cola to handle a class action suit filed in January by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Science in the Public Interest. The suit accuses Coca-Cola of making "deceptive" claims by basically selling sugar water mixed with vitamins and claiming that it boosts immunity and reduces the risk of disease.

Predictably, DiSalvo calls the lawsuit frivolous and says the team is preparing to aggressively defend their brand. And it's just another legal challenge that DiSalvo welcomes with the gusto that Queens natives are known for. "In this business," DiSalvo says, "you never know what's going to come at you."

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