Get in touch
Comprehensive legal advice to protect your creative business ideas.
We are recognised as a leading UK law firm for intellectual property and trade mark legal services, ranked in the Legal 500 in the South West.
Our clients come from the whole spectrum of industry sectors, from drinks companies and fashion brands to international cosmetics businesses and world famous photographers, writers, musicians, music publishers, venues, animators and presenters.
We help you maximise the value in your intellectual property, including licensing and all other contractual, copyright and trade mark and branding issues, enabling you to focus on what you do best.
From award-winning television series on Disney+ to seminal photographs of David Bowie to animated YouTube videos with 100 million views, our expert team of trade marks and intellectual property solciitors enable our clients to maximise their potential, and their revenue streams.
Our expertise includes:
- Brand protection advice
- Copyright advice
- Trade mark registrations, oppositions and assignments
- Trade mark infringement actions
- Commercial agreements of any nature relating to your IP
- Licensing and distribution agreements
- Confidentiality agreements/NDAs
Trade Marks and Intellectual Property Legal Services
FAQs
FAQs Trade Marks
Q1. What is a trade mark?
A trade mark is a word or a catchphrase that you can use to differentiate your product or service in the marketplace, such as Nike, Chanel, "just do it" (Nike) or Diageo. You can add brand value by doing this, and in certain circumstances charge a premium for your product or service.
Q2. When do I need to think about registering a trade mark?
When you decide on a name for your business, or goods or services.
Q3. I have a company name from Companies House and I own a domain name: why do I need to register a trade mark?
Registering a company at Companies House or buying a domain name does not stop someone else from using your name to market themselves or their own goods and services. They may choose to register a trade mark to protect their brand, in which case you may have an expensive and lengthy battle to regain control of what should be your name and brand. Owning a trade mark adds value to your business: intellectual property (which includes trade marks, copyright, designs and patents) can greatly increase your bottom line and even bring in new revenue streams from licensing. It is invaluable in the event of a business sale, as most incoming buyers will need to see that what they're buying includes your trade marks.
Q4. Where do I need to register my trade mark?
In the country or countries where your business operates or sells its goods and services. If this is just the UK, then a UK trade mark will be right for you, but if you want to trade in the EU, either now or in the future, then you should consider registering in the EU, which covers all EU countries. For countries outside the EU, please contact us.
FAQs Copyright
Q1. What is copyright? Copyright is the right of a creator to own, profit from, sell or license what they have created. It is a type of intellectual property, but is different to a patent (which covers a process or invention, like a new drug) or a design (which is a template for something that can be manufactured commercially – like Trunki) or a trade mark (which is a brand name or slogan to identify and differentiate yourself from others in the marketplace).
Q2. What can be copyrighted? Examples are music, books, scripts or photographs. Ideas in themselves cannot be copyrighted. It's the execution of that idea into an original work that can be copyrighted.
Q3. How does the law work to protect copyright? A photo, song, audio-visual or written creation is automatically protected the moment it is finished: the challenge lies in proving that it is you, and not someone else, that created it. For many years, to prove copyright, an author would post their work to their lawyers or banker by registered post and ask them to keep the package unopened with the postmarked date-stamp as proof of creation. Now, there are other ways you can prove your ownership, but things have not moved on that much.
Q4. Can I register copyright in the UK? There is no official UK copyright registration system, but you can register it online with the US copyright office, which carries weight internationally and can always be pointed to as proof that you registered something on a specific date. You can find the US copyright office at https://www.copyright.gov/ and it costs US$55 per registration if you do it direct online. Often, screenwriters register their work with the Writer's Guild of America (even British ones) as it is another way of proving that it's your screenplay and not someone else's. You can also use the little © symbol to show others it's your work. For example: a copyright statement might read: “ © 2017 Jane Smith All Rights Reserved”.
Q5. I've got an idea for a book or a film. How do I protect it? The more detailed your description of the idea, the better, for example if you write a twenty page treatment of a film: that treatment is copyright the moment it's created, as it will count as an original work. Ideas are cheap: it's the execution of that idea into something tangible that makes it capable of being protected by copyright law. So if you're pitching your work, you should keep track of who you meet with, and when. Sometimes a non-disclosure agreement (“NDA”) is appropriate, but generally you'd see them more in the case of an industrial patent or commercial design (which are not copyrightable works in the way a book is). In books, TV and film, often the person you're pitching to won't like signing an NDA because they might think that you don't trust them.
