Legal department

Protect, License and Enforce your Intellectual Property Rights Internationally

Intellectual property rights are legal protections for creations of the mind, including artistic, literary, and musical works, designs, inventions, and business assets, like brand names and logos. Common forms of intellectual property legal protections include trademarks, copyright, and patents. An intellectual property lawyer helps individuals and businesses to properly register, protect and manage their IP through a variety of non-contentious (e.g. registering a right) and contentious (e.g. fighting an infringement) work. This is vital for ensuring owners of IP maximise the commercial value of their work.

Where to start – identifying your IP

Identifying intellectual property rights should be a focus for all businesses, whether you are an entrepreneur, start-up, SME or international organisation. IP is not just for technology start-ups. All businesses face competition, and a good awareness and protection of your IP rights goes a long way towards giving you a competitive advantage and strong brand which you can monetise. Some IP rights arise automatically but others (and stronger, more easily enforceable forms of protection) need to be registered at the appropriate registry.

Why should you protect your intellectual property?

For many individuals and companies, intellectual property law protects more than just an idea or a concept – it protects genuine business assets that may be integral to the core services of a business, its overall value and its long-term financial viability. Intellectual property is a complex area of law. It can involve analysing a complex myriad of UK, EU and international laws. With the help of an IP lawyers/attorney, you can cover many different forms of creative work, from logos and corporate identity designs to products and services that set your business apart from your competitors. However, there are many traps and pitfalls for the unwary. It is particularly disappointing for us when clients come to us too late and only after they have missed the chance to protect their creations to the maximum extent possible. Because of this, it is often essential to consider the intellectual property law implications at the outset of any important new business project.

Our Intellectual Property Law Expertise

You can be confident that we will understand your business and its intellectual property protection needs. Our intellectual property lawyers work with many businesses including regional corporates, multinationals, schools, universities, further education colleges, charities, family businesses, local and national public sector bodies, and individuals. We value them all and take pride in our knowledge of them and the sectors in which they operate, which means that they benefit from our wider intellectual property protection experience and expertise.

Protect Business Growth

If you are a business – irrespective of size - it is crucial to protect unique products or services for which you own the IP rights, as competitors can use your success to effectively reduce your market share, resulting in slow growth or loss of revenue. If this happens to your business, our IP lawyers attorneys will advise you on the appropriate course of action to take. Losing market share early in the life of a business can have a profound effect on its ability to attract investors, employ staff and ultimately increase profits. It’s important to remember that no one else will check to see if your intellectual property rights have been protected and/or are being infringed.

Our experienced Intellectual Property Law team are well recognised, having worked with household names and international brands.

Intellectual Property encompasses a vast and diverse array of business property from software and other copyright materials, to designs and logos and inventions and processes. The laws surrounding Intellectual Property fall into a few areas, copyright, trademarks, design rights and patents.

Intellectual Property - what to consider

Your IP is the value of the creative assets your business generates. All businesses, no matter how big or small, will own some form of IP. It is crucial to appreciate what this umbrella term comprises and how it applies to your business. You can do all these things if you identify, protect, and exploit your Intellectual Property (‘IP’). Without this understanding, you will be at a considerable competitive disadvantage to other companies who have this knowledge and who exploit their IP to their benefit. Seeking intellectual property legal advice at the earliest possible stage in the development of your business is always advisable and worthwhile. Intellectual Property can subsist in literary, dramatic, and musical works and include trademarks, design rights, copyrights, and patents. They may be relevant to a wide variety of assets including text, graphics, artwork, photographs, packaging, inventions, videos, audio, websites, databases, software and apps. Understanding what IP, you have in your business/brand and how best to protect, use and exploit it, is fundamental to profitability.

• Transactional and contentious IP legal advice
• Working out what IP you own, when/how the IP was created and by whom
• Registering and protecting that IP, so other people can’t use or steal it
• Advising on whether the launch of a new brand is viable, and the name is cleared/free to use
• Making sure you are not at risk of infringing anyone else’s IP
• Helping to protect and maximise the value of confidential information
• Helping you commercialise the value of that IP, including via licensing and assignment
• Negotiating instances of domain name disputes and cybersquatting
• Advising on the status of IP rights pre and post the Brexit transitional period
• Advising on IP in the context of corporate transactions
• Anti-counterfeiting which prevents your competitors from imitating your brands, products, and designs.
• Copyright and database rights our copyright lawyers can help across a range of areas, including disputes and litigation, commercial transactions, general clearance and advisory work, intellectual property rights audits and chain of title research.
• Design rights helping you to protect your creative investment and negotiate the complex legal maze of multiple overlapping design laws.
• Know how, trade secrets and confidential information through commercial agreements and litigation measures we can help you protect and exploit these valuable assets.
• Patent litigation from multi-million-pound patent claims in the High Court to more modest, but vital patent claims in the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court, our team has the skills and experience to manage all forms of patent litigation.
• Trademarks and brands we can advise you across the whole spectrum of trademark rights and related rights (such as passing off), including clearance searches, protection and registrability issues, co-ordination, and management of trademark filings, branding and franchise agreements, disputes, and litigation.
• Domain name law we have successfully acted both for those bringing and defending domain name proceedings.

Brand Protection. Protecting your brand and business assets

It is important for businesses to protect their assets, and this includes the non-tangible assets that the business owns. Registering your ownership of those assets that can be registered is key but equally important is vigilance to stop unauthorised use. It is important to take action to stop other individuals and companies from infringing your rights as if you do not act, it can later be argued that you have granted an implied licence for your works to be used.

IP Infringements. Intellectual property infringement?

We are highly experienced at being able to resolve disputes regarding Intellectual Property including claims, providing pragmatic and commercial advice to you and your business. Often disputes such as these can be resolved without the need to resort to litigation and early involvement from us can ensure that the infringement is stopped promptly.

WHO CAN WE HELP?

As international leading experts in intellectual property, we have the capability, experience, and resources to work with any client – whether you’re a small, independent creator or a global brand. And since our founding, that’s exactly what we’ve done. We’re proud to have worked with clients of all shapes and sizes across a wide variety of sectors, from household names to individual artists.

EXPLOITING AND LEVERAGING INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS

Our intellectual property experts work closely with you to understand your business goals and safeguard your creative ideas both now and in the future.

ENFORCEMENT OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS NATIONALLY AND WORLDWIDE

Intellectual property rights help your business maintain a competitive edge in the marketplace. Our specialist intellectual property lawyers enforce these rights against infringers to protect and enhance your business success.

TRADEMARK CLEARANCE, REGISTRATION AND PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT NATIONALLY AND WORLDWIDE

Our experts take a commercial approach to trademarks, conducting thorough clearance searches to highlight any third-party rights that may restrict the use of your chosen trademark either now or in the future and advising on all aspects of registration and portfolio management to get the best results for your business.

PASSING OFF AND TRADEMARK LITIGATION

Whether your rights are registered or unregistered our team of litigation specialists will take swift action to protect your business and your brand if misrepresentation or trademark infringement has occurred.

ANTI-COUNTERFEITING

Counterfeiting of goods has never been more prolific. Fake products that are lower quality and potentially dangerous to consumers can harm your reputation as well as your bottom line. Our specialist team provide advice on legal and enforcement strategies to protect your business against counterfeiting.

COPYRIGHT LICENSING AND LITIGATION

Our expert lawyers advise on all aspects of copyright licensing and act swiftly and decisively in pursuing litigation relating to copyright infringement.

PATENT AND DESIGN RIGHT LICENSING AND LITIGATION

Our experts IP Lawyers create agreements to help protect and exploit your design rights. We have a proven track history in successfully pursuing litigation if these rights are infringed by competitors.

PROTECTION OF TRADE SECRETS AND CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION

All businesses should protect themselves against trade secret theft. Our specialist team of IP lawyers can help you put processes in place from restrictive covenants to intellectual property clauses in employment contracts to help protect your confidential information. We can also help you act if a breach of confidentiality occurs.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AUDITS AND DUE DILIGENCE

Our expert IP lawyers help your business perform a systematic review of your IP assets – highlighting related risks and identifying opportunities.

BRAND PROTECTION AND REPUTATION MANAGEMENT

A good reputation is one the of most valuable business assets you can have. If your reputation or privacy is at risk, our experienced lawyers can help protect you and your business.