Intellectual Property Law

• Advising businesses on their holistic intellectual property strategy including its protection and exploitation
• Advising international brands on their intellectual property portfolio
• Advising numerous businesses on strategic Intellectual Property Provisions in agreements with household name brands, including in relation to software provision, service provision and the international supply of goods

• Brand management and licensing and brand exploitation
• Copyright Protection Advice
•  Advice on copyright infringements
• Trade mark advice and applications
• Design right applications, registered designs and renewals
• Advising on IP provisions in commercial contracts

Generally speaking, an assignment of intellectual property rights will pass ownership of those intellectual property rights to the recipient of the assignment. Therefore, depending on the exact terms of the assignment, the previous owner would no longer have rights to use those intellectual property rights. Customers will often request assignments of work created for them. Whilst this is typical, thought needs to be given to whether any intellectual property rights need to be retained for the business moving forward.

Conversely, a licence only gives a right for the recipient to use the intellectual property rights within defined parameters and generally does not pass ownership across. Licences can be exclusive, sole and non-exclusive will all having different implications. It is imperative that the type of licence, the parameters on use and consequences of breach are all clearly set out in the contract and accurately reflect the intention of the parties.

The intellectual property clauses are a focal point of many IT contracts where it is important to capture rights not only in the core software, but also in any developments, in the supporting materials such as user manuals etc.

The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1988 )acts to support copyright owners in protecting their work from being copied by others. Generally speaking, copyright laws give ownership of work on creation to its author, whereby they will have the exclusive right to reproduce, distribute and display their work. Copyright also gives the owner control as to who can use their creation and how it can be used. An author’s work is protected under copyright laws when the work is created, provided certain conditions are met.

On the contrary, if someone other than the owner of a work wishes to use the copyright owner’s work then, if they do not obtain permission from the owner of the work, they may fall within the ambit of copyright infringement.

There are some uses of copyright work that will not constitute infringement or which are permitted by law – for example, uses intended for specific purposes including research and private study, copying for data analysis and quotation from a work. In performing any of the permitted acts, you must work within the requisite parameters, as otherwise you could very quickly fall out of remits of a permitted act and into the remits of copyright infringement.

If you feel that you have copyright in work which has been copied, we are able to review the works and the alleged copying and give a view on whether a right exists and whether it has been infringed.