Trade Marks

Brexit update...

Since 1 January 2021 we have started to offer a reduced price for filing UK trade mark and design applications for EUIPO representatives and other regular users of EUIPO who require a UK filing correponding to an EU application or registration without detailed pre-filing advice. Please contact us for details.

About your brand...

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.

Part of your branding is your trade marks - the words, logos or other signs that customers recognise to identify 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 carry out trade mark searches and secure appropriate trade mark protection for your brands in the UK, Europe and throughout the world. We can advise you how best to maintain strong legal rights, can review whether your protection reflects your current branding and can provide appropriate advice in the event of any disputes. We also provide a cost-effective trade mark renewal service.

Our trade mark services include:

• Clearance searches to assess whether a proposed trade mark can be registered.
• Filing and prosecuting trade mark applications through to registration in the UK, Europe and internationally. We have established relationships with trade mark attorneys throughout the world and through which we can coordinate international trade mark filing programs. Importantly, as these relationships are not fixed, we choose the attorneys we use dependent on a client's requirements.
• 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.
• Strategic management and planning of trade mark portfolios, including payment of renewal fees.
• Competitor monitoring: we can “watch” the progress of a competitor’s existing trade mark applications and we can carry out regular searches for the publication of a competitor’s new trade marks, thus keeping abreast of their trade mark registration activity.
• Carrying out due diligence exercises 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 frequently asked questions about trade marks - and registered designs which can also be relevant to protecting some aspects of branding.