Services
Our services are centred around intellectual property that can be registered. We protect innovation, design, and branding across all sectors of industry, and at all stages in the supply chain.
For each IP right we offer services covering strategic advice, pre-registration searches, registrations and renewals, oppositions and dispute resolution. We handle work throughout the world, working with local colleagues in over 100 countries.
Services
Sectors
Our attorneys specialise in one or more sectors of industry, which enables them to provide quality advice with a commercial focus.
Our patent specialists have detailed understanding of the background technology, which ensures that your patent applications are prepared with the correct scope, reducing the likelihood of challenges from third parties and objections from the patent office.
They also advise whether other forms of protection would be more appropriate. Our brand specialists work with brand managers for leading brands and their advice is commercially focussed making sure that you get the best value from your budget.
Sectors
When you think of fashion brands extending beyond their usual offering of clothing and accessories, you may think of fragrance or cosmetics lines, or possibly even homewear. But over the past few years, fashion brands have moved into much more unconventional spaces.
Last year, we reviewed a United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office (IPO) report on sectors of the economy which make the most intensive use of intellectual property (IP) rights, and how much these sectors contribute to the UK economy. This week, the European Patent Office and the European Union Intellectual Property Office have jointly published a report on the commercial benefit of owning IP rights to European companies
Retail sales have been steadily shifting online since web browsers were first created in the 1990s. Data from the UK’s Office for National Statistics shows us that “Internet sales as a percentage of total retail sales” increased from 6.8% in February 2010, to 11.7% in February 2015, to 19.1% in February 2020. With the COVID-19 pandemic forcing the UK into various stages of lockdown since March 2020, internet sales ballooned to a record 36.2% of all retail sales in November 2020.
The UK has now left the EU, following a transition period that ended on 31 December 2020. In contrast to the position in a number of industries, the position in relation to IP rights has been relatively smooth. The UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) has created and entered into its database the comparable rights based on EU trade mark and design registrations which were all in place as of Exit Day. The Office is continuing to work on comparable rights created from EU designations filed via the Madrid or Hague systems and appears to be making good progress. The UKIPO should be commended for this, particularly in view of the current working conditions.
In 2001 an experimental alternative to the NFL was launched by Vince McMahon: the XFL. The XFL hosted fewer teams, promising quicker games and greater entertainment. The XFL lasted just one season before collapsing due to significant financial losses. In 2018, McMahon revived the league with a planned restart date in 2020. Fast forward to January 2021 and the picture for the XFL remains bleak, it having lasted only 5 weeks before collapsing due to financial pressures linked to COVID 19. Dwayne Johnson and his associates now own the league and another restart is scheduled for the 2022 season.
Colours and colour combinations play an important role in branding. In a crowded sector colours have the capacity to function as a powerful visual key, enabling consumers to easily distinguish between different products and brands. Trade mark rights granted for specific colours, or combinations of colours, are, therefore, powerful IP rights. The uncertainty surrounding how similar a colour must be to infringe a colour mark registration works in the favour of the owners of colour trade mark registrations – in extreme cases a colour mark registration may deter competitors from using all shades of that colour on/in relation to the same goods/services. Little surprise then that for some trade mark owners securing registered rights in colour marks has become a key strategic objective.
The CJEU have recently issued a judgment in Case C-456/19, referred from the Swedish Patent and Market Court of Appeal. The case centred on whether a trade mark consisting of colour combinations, intended to be systematically affixed to goods used to deliver the services covered by an application, must depart significantly from the norms and customs of the commercial sector in order for the trade mark to have distinctive character. This is a test which has been applied in relation to 3D trade marks but we have not seen it applied to these type of colour combination marks before.
The rules governing address for service for intellectual property rights in the United Kingdom will change after the UK exits the European Union on 1 January 2020. Subject to legislative implementation, which is expected this week, from 1 January 2021 the UKIPO will no longer accept addresses in the EEA as a valid address for service. As a result, any party wishing to file an application for a trade mark, patent or registered design will need to appoint an address for service within the UK, Gibraltar or the Channel Islands.