Trade Marks

We are Trade Mark Attorneys who provide tailored advice

Your brand is your company's unique identifier and way of presenting itself to customers. When you invest in promoting your brand and developing your reputation you want to protect that brand and to ensure that it is you, and not your competitors, who benefit from that investment.

Part of your branding is your trade marks - the words, logos or other signs that customers recognise as identifying the source of goods and services.

We are Chartered Trade Mark Attorneys and we provide a wide range of legal services relating to trade marks. We can advise you on how best to put in place and maintain strong legal rights in the UK, Europe and throughout the world, we can review whether your protection properly reflects your current branding, and we will provide appropriate and expert advice and support in the event of disputes. We also provide a cost-effective trade mark renewal service.

Our trade mark services include:

• Filing trade mark applications and prosecting them through to registration in the UK, Europe and internationally. We have close relationships with trade mark attorneys throughout the world, through whom we are able to manage international trade mark filing programs. Importantly, as these relationships are not fixed, we are able to work with the overseas attorneys who best fit our clients' requirements.
• Clearance searches to assess whether a proposed trade mark is available for use and registration in the UK. Searches in other jurisdictions are also possible via our extensive network of trusted associates.
• Conducting opposition, revocation or invalidation proceedings before the UK Intellectual Property Office (UK IPO) or the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EU IPO), either in defence of a client’s trade mark or on behalf of a client in a proactive measure against a competitor’s trade mark.
• Settling trade mark disputes by negotiation
• Strategic planning and management of trade mark portfolios, including portfolio audits and trade mark filing programmes
• Renewal fees payments.
• Competitor monitoring: we can 'watch' the progress of a competitor’s trade mark applications, and we can carry out regular searches for the publication of applications to register new trade marks, thus keeping abreast of competitors' trade mark registration activity.
• Due diligence checks on trade mark portfolios and related intellectual property assets: these are often required by potential investors seeking an assessment of whether or not the intellectual property portfolio of interest is in good order.

Please follow the links below for some frequently asked questions about trade marks. Information is also provided about registered designs, which play an important role in protecting aspects of branding.

Further advice

For further advice, please contact the trade marks team at Hindles.

Liz Lowe

Fiona Jones

Alix de La Motte-Broöns