PMLG's intellectual property group
The Intellectual Property lawyers in our member firms advise
clients on all aspects of intellectual property law, providing a
one stop shop for advice on patents, designs, copyright, databases,
passing off and unfair competition, parallel importing,
anti-counterfeiting, confidentiality and media law. Considering the
territorial nature of intellectual property rights together with
the increasingly wide European focus of our clients, we recognise
the importance to clients of being able to provide seamless
Europe-wide expertise in this area. Further details of our
expertise are set out in the paragraphs which follow.
Trademark Advice
International brand image is becoming increasingly important to
many of our clients, particularly with the pervasiveness of the
internet and all which this has to offer international
businesses. We have extensive experience in handling domestic
and overseas trademark matters for a wide range of national and
international clients. Based on the experience of our member
firms, we are able to offer our clients a value-driven but expert
approach to international trademark/brand management, in each case
always having regard for the individual needs of our clients.
We advise on all aspects of trade mark law, from
pre-registration searches and registerability of trade marks, to
registration, exploitation and enforcement.
We are able to assist clients with the development and
implementation of both branding strategies and brand protection
strategies, providing monitoring and enforcement services in
respect of conflicting trade mark registrations or trade mark use,
domain name watch services, and online brand and image surveillance
services to ensure consistency of use across jurisdictions.
We can also offer our own dedicated and qualified trade mark
attorney service through the trade mark units within a number of
our PMLG member firms. In this way we can set up and maintain
trade mark portfolios for both national and international clients,
provided in a cost efficient manner to utilise fully the benefits
of our network of law firms. This aspect fully complements
the brand development and protection strategies which our lawyers
are able to offer.
Design Right Advice
Design rights are becoming increasingly important in many
industries, such as retail and fashion, and a good grasp of what is
available in terms of design right protection in Europe is
essential as clients become more and more focused on international
sales. As with trade marks, we provide advice on all aspects
of design rights, including registrability, the benefits of
registration and enforcement. Several of our member firms have
dedicated design rights units which provide application filing
services, thereby offering a one stop shop on design right
registration and protection, and we have acted in many design right
cases (many for fashion designers and retailers), both defending
against design right claims and asserting design rights on behalf
of our clients.
Patent, Know How and Research and Development Advice
We advise clients on all aspects of patent law, including how to
protect their know how, providing advice on the registrability of
inventions, strategic advice on territorial registration, advice on
exploitation such as licensing, distribution, joint ventures and
research and development arrangements, and advice on transfers or
acquisitions. Our network of law firms means that we can provide
advice on establishing Europe-wide protection for our clients'
market leading inventions. We also have expert competition lawyers
who are able to provide advice to ensure that licensing and
technology agreements fall on the right side of European (and
national) competition law.
Copyright and Database Rights
Copyright can exist in many different types of work, and the
possibilities in terms of the various licensing structures which
are available for copyright protected work are manifold. Our
lawyers are able to advise on how to protect copyright, ensuring
its ownership falls to the intended person, and maximise returns by
establishing appropriate licensing and royalty models.
We provide similar expertise in relation to database rights which,
in the information age, have become increasingly important for our
clients.
IP Litigation
In addition to our non-contentious experience, our network firms
have expertise in defending and prosecuting intellectual property
right claims, from opposing an application for a conflicting trade
mark registration to defending claims for patent infringement and
advising on invalidity counterclaims. We also provide advice on
marketing strategies to minimise the risk of our clients falling
foul of misleading advertising regulations.
Anti-Counterfeiting
PMLG member firms have established services to stem the
distribution and sale of counterfeit goods both nationally and
internationally. We advise our clients about customs arrest
measures and help them with issuing legal proceedings against the
respective importers or sellers. In addition we assist clients with
regard to the seizure of goods at trade fairs, in shops, warehouses
or other premises.
Media Law
The growth of new media services has raised many legal issues,
especially in the field of intellectual property. Many of our
clients are production, broadcasting and publishing companies and a
number of well known performing artists have instructed us as well.
We draft and advise on standard media arrangements such as
broadcasting agreements, production agreements, collaboration and
marketing agreements and agreements with performing artists. Our
breadth of expertise extends to advising on media related issues
such as taxation of performing artists, the payment of radio and TV
licensing fees, collecting societies and regulations protecting
young persons.
We always aim to be robust in our advice, pro-active in our
recommendations and commercial.
See: PMLG website
