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 Nike applied to register the word mark FOOTWARE as a UK trade mark, Puma opposed the application. The issue was recently resolved in the High Court.
Smiley Miley, Inc. (‘SMI’), the company owned by American singer Miley Cyrus, has won a six year legal battle to register the trade mark MILEY CYRUS in the EU. The General Court of the European Union (‘the GC’) issued its decisions on 16 June 2021, overturning the refusal of this trade mark application by the EU Intellectual Property Office (‘the EUIPO’).
The General Court of the European Union (‘the GC’) has issued its hotly anticipated decision in Hasbro Inc. v European Union Intellectual Property Office (‘EUIPO’). This case centres on whether one or more EU trade mark (‘EUTM’) registrations owned by Hasbro Inc. (‘Hasbro’) for the trade mark MONOPOLY are invalid because Hasbro’s intentions, when re-filing a mark that was already protected by an EUTM covering the same goods/services, was to undermine the requirement to prove use of an EUTM.
There has been a growing number of trade mark disputes involving established brands in the food and beverage sector and supermarket copycats.
Oatly AB register a controversial slogan as an EU trade mark. Learn more about protecting your slogan as a trade mark.
The resale market is worth billions and you can see why – notably whenever there is a Nike Air Jordan x Off-White collaboration, trainers can be seen on the resale market at around five times the initial retail price, if not more in some cases. This makes these rare trainers a valuable commodity.
On 26th March this year, Brooklyn, New York, based art collective MSCHF Product Studio, Inc. announced the launch of a pair of ‘Satan’ themed training shoes that were an instant sensation. The shoes were a limited edition collaboration with Grammy award winning rapper and media personality Lil Nas X and used the black on black version of Nike’s Air Max 97 as their basis. Nike however was not a part of the collaboration and had no input into either the design or manufacture of the shoe.
Many of us feel as though we have undergone some form of transformation over the course of this last extraordinary year. On 21 April 2021, the UK IPO proudly announced its own “One IPO” Transformation Programme – a five-year programme intended to transform Intellectual Property (IP) services and enhance the value that the IPO adds to the UK economy. As Amanda Solloway MP (Minister for Science, Research and Innovation) commented: “The UK already has a world leading IP environment, but a service for innovators must itself innovate.”