Brands are one of the most valuable and easily identifiable IP rights. At the most basic, this extends to your company/business name and website domain name. Likely your name is important to you, so you should make sure you protect it.
Your band is made up of various IP rights, most notably, trade marks, designs, company and domain names, social media handles and more.
We can provide you with advice in relation to the creation, protection, maintenance, enforcement and exploitation of all aspects of a band, including a registered trade mark and design.
Our team comprises both solicitors and trade mark attorneys (UK and EU qualified) and advises on all aspects of the lifecycle of your brand.
Our brand services
Clearance, protection and management
- Brand clearance and searching. Our powerful AI software tools allow us to search and screen trade marks registries in over 190 countries together with common law searches including company and domain names and social media handles.
- Identifying what you can protect whether as a registered trade mark and/or design, e.g. words and logos, sounds, shapes, colours, motion marks, whether nationally or internationally
- The timing and sequence for registering your brands, such company names, domain names, social media handles, trade marks and designs, having regard to any brand launch and avoiding brand hijacking
- Securing trade mark registration, nationally and internationally, overcoming any objections and/or oppositions
- Managing your band portfolio, including renewals, ownership changes, gaps in your portfolio and correspondence with other rights owners and trade mark registries.
- Brand audits, due diligence, licensing and franchising, assignments
Disputes, enforcement and resolution
- Watching services, such as trade mark, company and domain name monitoring so you are alerted to any potentially conflicting activity
- Preparing cease and desist letters, take down notices, co-existence agreements and letters of consent
- Registered trade mark infringement and invalidity proceedings, and passing off actions
- Oppositions, revocation and invalidity proceedings before the UK and EU Trade Mark Registries and Courts, Appeals in the UK Courts, the EUIPO and CJEU.
- Disputes before the Company Names Tribunal, International Domain Name Recovery
- Criminal proceedings in relation to counterfeit goods
- Dealing with Customs detention authorities and Trading Standards
Copyright and database rights
Copyright and database rights are broad based automatic and unregistered rights. The rights do not require registration in the UK and EU, unlike trade marks or patents.
Copyright safeguards a wide range of rights, from artistic, musical, and literary works to broadcasts, films, and performances. Copyright can cover everything from the content on your website, images and logos, product packing designs, sound recordings and software.
Databases can be protected by copyright which protects the selection or arrangement of material in a database. Database right is a separate right to copyright and protects the contents of a database. Database rights can for example protect your lists of customers/clients/contacts and suppliers.
Our copyright and database right services include
- Advise on the creation and ownership of copyright and database rights: we help you in relation to the commissioning of copyright protected works and securing ownership, for example engaging an agency to create your brand or website. We help you with copy and product clearance to ensure the works you are creating and intend to you do not encroach on third party IP rights.
- Transactions and licensing: we assist you to maximise the value of your copyright assets through licensing and other IP agreements and ensure you get the best deal by guiding you through the negotiation of agreements that ensure you have the rights you need to use the works of others. Our experience includes publishing, broadcasting, music, art, fashion and design, architectural and design.
- Disputes: we help you to enforce and defend your copyright and database rights, including Court proceedings and urgent injunctions, online take-down procedures, mediation and alternative dispute resolution.
Why choose our brand and trade mark lawyers?
With a large specialist team of trade mark attorneys and lawyers, we have the experience to help you. We treat every client individually, and can flex our team to fit around your needs.
We’re very experienced in registering, commercialising and enforcing trade mark rights and can solve many problems before they even arise.
As well as offering a full range of legal services around trade marks, we’re also a full-service law firm. That means that we can support your wider legal needs – from corporate and commercial, through to employment and real estate.
Beyond simply providing a legal service, we can work with you as strategic partners. We can help you devise an intellectual property strategy that looks at the longer-term picture of what you want to get out of your rights.
What is a trade mark?
A trade mark is a way of protecting the elements of your brand that make it unique. Common things that are trade-marked are names and logos. But it might also be a sound, a colour or even a shape.
Registering a trade mark means that another person or business can’t copy or closely copy the things that differentiate you from your competitors.
Contact Us
If you need advice about a trade mark issue, our lawyers are here to help. Call us on 0808 271 2602 or contact us online and we’ll get back to you.
