BRANDING LONDON

is your brand name or logo important to you? A well designed brand and catchy name can be very valuable company assets. That’s why you need the best protection you can get. Whilst most business owners have a certain level of understanding of the importance of branding, taking expert legal advice on how to protect, manage, enforce and commercialise the valuable intellectual property subsisting in your brand is a worthwhile investment. Especially if you want to grow your business and grow it into new markets or overseas. Various registered and unregistered intellectual property rights can subsist in a brand including Trade Marks, Design Rights, Copyright and Passing Off. Evolution and Protection of Your Brand We can give help you with your brand strategy and the protection including: Advising on the initial concept and clearance searches to ensure no one else is using the brand or anything similar, to whether your brand should be a registered as a trade mark and/or a design, and in what countries such registration needs to be made. These would include the UK, European or other International registrations. We help you decide what classes and specifications you need for maximum protection and for the future. In order to safe guard you from treading on anyone else’s IP we help you by undertaking trade mark and design clearances. This ensures that certain IP is not already registered or being used by a third party. Sometimes problems arise after making applications for trade marks and design rights. Even with careful clearance searches, oppositions or other proceedings may arise in the trade mark office. We help you steer through the murky waters and procedures and get the right results. We will also advise on other aspects of protecting your brand such as domain name registrations, company name changes and other branding and advertising issues. Management of your Portfolio Proper management of intellectual property is important. It keeps costs under control and ensures effective risk protection is in place. We can manage your trade mark and/or design right portfolio dealing with renewal of registrations and policing your registrations and unregistered marks and designs. If a conflicting mark arises, we can monitor and oppose or apply to cancel third-party applications or registrations. This is especially important if they affect or devalue your mark or design. Protection and Defence of Your Brand Sometimes you will find that someone else comes along with a brand or design that either copies or looks like yours. In this case, we can provide objective, legal and practical advice about what options you have. This may include court proceedings for trade mark/design right infringement and/or passing off. We can also advise and undertake domain name dispute resolution proceedings. In the unfortunate event that you receive letters before action or Court proceedings we can help with your defence too. Whichever side of the fence you are, as part of our comprehensive service we help you put together settlement negotiations, mediation and alternative dispute resolution. Commercialisation and Monetisation It is really important to ensure that ALL your assets work for you and make money for your business. We can help you identify the right channels to market and then help you formulate the right type of contractual arrangements for you. We regularly advise on agency agreements, licensing distribution agreements and franchising as well as related disputes. We will also help you to identify potential problems such as ownership disputes and valuations on your intellectual property. We provide solid, reliable and commercial advice to ensure that the exploitation of your brand yields the highest possible returns for you whilst ensuring that everything is protected thereby reducing the risks of commercialising your products and services.

For more information on BRANDING LONDON talk to Virtuoso Legal