Biography
Georgie is the Head of IP, a member of Irwin Mitchell’s International Team and Head of the US Desk.
Georgie is a leading IP lawyer with over 25 years’ experience. She helps individuals and organisations devise IP strategies and secure the IP rights that are pivotal to a successful market entry and international expansion.
She has significant experience in relation to the strategic protection and management of brands internationally and has advised many global corporates and household names on their world-wide brand protection matters.
Georgie is an experienced IP litigator and has a broad practice, ranging from trade marks and passing off, copyright and designs, breach of confidence, marketing and advertising issues. She has dealt with disputes in all key dispute forums, ranging from UKIPO, English Courts (civil and criminal), arbitration proceedings and domain name dispute resolution proceedings. Georgie frequently represents clients as lead counsel on the co-ordination of cross border, international disputes.
Georgie also advises on issues of reputation, defamation, privacy and crisis management.
As Head of Irwin Mitchell’s US Desk, Georgie has spent much of her career in the US and working for US based businesses and individuals. She looks after the firm’s transatlantic relationships, providing legal and practical support to help UK businesses expand and succeed in the US, and to US companies to set up and invest in the UK, often with a springboard into Europe and beyond. She and the US team help clients and prospects navigate the UK and EU legal regulatory environment, connecting them with trusted partnerships when required.
Georgie is a regular speaker and contributor to issues concerning brands and reputation management, transatlantic policy, trade and investment. She is an active member of the International Trade Mark Association and serves on the INTA Leadership team.
Career Highlights:
- Acting for many US and other international brands in relation to their global brand protection strategies, clearing brands for use and registration, securing registered trade mark protection in over 180 counties
- Acting for an international healthcare staffing business in relation to multiple proceedings, including without notice and disclosure applications, concerning claims against former employees and shareholders for breach of confidence, breach of contract and database right infringement
- Acting on an international trade mark and licensing dispute involving proceedings in the UK, France, Germany and Italy, together with an anti-suit injunction in the UK
- Acting for various luxury apparel brands, in relation to trade mark, design right and copyright infringement proceedings, involving issues of anti-counterfeiting, customs interventions and issues of parallel importation across Europe
- Acting for a global leading luxury drinks manufacturer concerning the counterfeiting, infringement of trade marks and marks of its bottles, involving related proceedings in the UK, USA, Canada, Poland, Czech Republic, France and Italy
- Acting on an LCIA arbitration, subject to English law and procedure relating to the development of luxury branded hotel residences in the UAE for one of the world's oldest luxury brands
- Acting for an international textile corporation in relation to the infringement of copyright, design right and breach of agency proceedings, successfully overturning three injunctions and a freezing order in the UK and Turkey
- Acting for corporates and individuals (including high profile/media and sporting personalities) in relation to issues of defamation, malicious falsehood, privacy and harassment issues, securing the removal of offending material from social media channels and preventing publication of offending content
- Advising businesses in relation to issues of corporate crisis management, including cyber related incidents.
Testimonials
Georgie has been recognised for decades as a ‘leading individual’ in Chambers and Partners and Legal 500, and is recognised by ‘Best Lawyers in the UK’ for IP and also by Spears. Client testimonials include:
‘Georgie Collins is a stand-out lawyer and one that we feel lucky to work with’ – Legal 500, 2024
‘Georgie Collins has huge experience and excellent commercial sense, as well international experience’ – Legal 500, 2024
‘Georgie Collins is a superb IP lawyer whose knowledge of the law is encyclopaedic and only matched by her ability to utilise it in a proportionate and effective way’ - Chambers 2024
‘Georgie is one of the most savvy, responsive and practical lawyers I have worked with’ - Chambers 2024
"Georgie Collins is enthusiastic, energetic, commercially minded, fights her client’s corner and has wide experience in the IP sector." - Legal 500, 2022
"Georgie Collins is always deeply committed to her clients’ cause, hard-working, determined, commercially minded and with loads of experience across the sector." – Legal 500, 2021
"Working with Georgie is an absolute pleasure. She knows her stuff and is very good at judging proportional responses to situations that arise... She understands clients from a commercial point of view and inspires a massive amount of confidence." – Chambers & Partners, 2021
"She is energetic, enthusiastic and very hard-working." – Chambers & Partners, 2020
"She's accessible and responsive, and you always get a clear view from her." – Chambers & Partners, 2018
Georgie is "dynamic and proactive" – Legal 500 2016
"Georgie Collins of Irwin Mitchell is rated highly by sources for her command of copyright, database right, domain name and trade mark law." – Chambers & Partners 2016
“communicative, able and patient” (Chambers 2012)
“business-savvy and brilliant at developing client relationships" (Chambers UK 2011)
“offering “constructive and practical advice on luxury brands and design” (Legal 500 UK 2011)
'Lauded by her clients for her 'sophisticated' handling of international trade mark and domain name disputes' (Chambers 2010)
“observers greatly appreciate the work she accomplishes in relation to trade mark issues involving parallel importing and counterfeiting, and respect her abilities in mediation, arbitration and dispute resolution” (Chambers 2007)
"bright, reactive and pragmatic," "a practitioner par excellence with a rare insight in to multinational and multidisciplinary problems" (Chambers 2006)
