If your trade mark, design, copyright work and/or patent has been copied or infringed by a third party without your approval, we can take steps to prevent this unauthorised exploitation and to obtain compensation for your resulting losses or an account of the profits made by the infringing party. We have experience in dealing with cases involving all types of intellectual property, advising both the owners of the rights in question and also the alleged infringers.
Every intellectual property dispute will be different but it is always important to quickly establish the extent of the intellectual property rights, who owns those rights, what infringement activity has taken place and who has been involved in the infringement.
It is sometimes necessary to take very urgent steps and to apply for injunctive relief from the Court to immediately stop the infringement. On other occasions, a warning shot across the bows will lead to an amicable conclusion, sometimes even including an agreement that the potential infringer is licenced to continue on payment of appropriate royalties. In other cases, the potential infringer will seek to allege not only that they have not infringed, but also that the design or trade mark is not valid.
Recent cases
We have regularly advised a multi-national franchise organization in respect of the protection of its brand and reputation. An appropriately worded letter has often been enough to bring any infringement of the client’s trade mark to an immediate and cost effective end.
We have brought passing off proceedings on behalf of one business (which did not have a registered trade mark), where a second local business had started to operate in almost the same market with an almost identical name to that of our client. As a result of our intervention, the second business subsequently changed its name.
Another recent case involved a successful local business who obtained compensation from a multi-national competitor who had copied the innovative design of one of our client’s products, which was high profile and very successful commercially. Unusually we were forced to take this case to trial but our client ultimately obtained judgment in a landmark decision. Other cases have involved designs in many different fields, from all forms of lighting to clothing.
We have acted for a number of clients who have discovered that a competitor has copied content from their website and even the meta tags within the underlying code of a webpage. We wrote to the other parties to draw their attention to the infringement of our client’s copyright which led to the revision of the pages in question.
We also have specific experience of music copyright disputes, acting for both the record company and the artist.
We work with national Patent Agents to protect inventive products which our clients wish to exploit. Recent cases have involved a range of mechanical and electronic patents.
