Our experienced Corporate & Commercial team gives intellectual property advice to a wide range of clients including start-ups, spin-outs, SMEs, and multi-nationals.
Put simply, ‘intellectual property’ means intangible creations of the mind. These include designs, plans, text, software code, databases and know-how. In many cases, intellectual property assets make up a substantial part of the value of a business. To maintain a competitive advantage while commercialising its intellectual property, it is essential that a business rich in intellectual property assets takes all the necessary steps to secure them. We appreciate the importance of defining and protecting intellectual property assets, through advising on matters such as confidentiality agreements, trade mark applications, as well as intellectual property licences, assignments and royalty agreements. These offer robust legal protection against loss of control of intellectual property, or infringement by third parties.
Often businesses will create new products and services, without giving careful consideration to the ownership of the underlying intellectual property that is generated. We therefore offer a service of undertaking intellectual property audits, where we analyse the assets or products of a business, and review the sequence of events and contractual documents governing their creation, in order to identify, define and establish the ownership of all intellectual property rights, such as copyright, trade marks, know-how and trade secrets. Advice and assistance is then given on how best to secure, protect and exploit the intellectual property rights that are identified in the audit.
Typical issues that we may advise on include:
- Intellectual property rights and their ownership;
- Trade marks and branding;
- R&D agreements;
- Image rights;
- Influencer and affiliate marketing agreements;
- Website and social media policies;
- Software licences and SAAS agreements;
- Franchise agreements;
- IP assignments;
- IP licence agreements; and
- Royalty agreements.
