Intellectual Property Litigation

We protect and defend IP assets owned by many of the largest global businesses. Our innovative and brave approach to disputes reflects our belief in the rights that you own and our commitment to pushing hard for the protection that you deserve.

Our experience allows us to protect your business from third party IP rights that are unjustifiably threatening your activities.

We’re well-versed in litigating in all of the specialist IP Courts (IPEC, High Court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court) and tribunals in the UK. We are also experts in litigating in Belgium with experience of bringing and defending proceedings in before the Belgian courts. We can represent you in the courts of the EU and our international practice means we are perfectly positioned to help you with multijurisdictional disputes and proceedings all of types. Whatever the context, we use our extensive experience to devise strategies to help you get the result you want as efficiently as possible.

We’re not afraid to embrace new technologies in court and tribunal procedure and practice in order to make the processes of litigation as efficient as possible – in the English courts we were an early adopters of the Shorter Trials Scheme and have used the Disclosure Pilot Scheme to enable clients to achieve their goals quickly whilst minimising disruption and cost.

We pride ourselves on our innovative and strategic approach to dispute work. Our team pioneered dynamic site blocking injunctions in the UK to protect copyright content and have supported similar actions in multiple jurisdictions around the world. We then established an equivalent remedy for brand owners. We have set long standing precedents in designs and patents cases, and are constantly pushing the boundaries of trade mark law.

We represent brand owners in disputes before the registries of the EUIPO, the UKIPO and the BOIP on a daily basis and have represented brand owners in appeals to the General Court and the Court of Justice of the European Union. We use Nominet’s Dispute Resolution Service to prevent cybersquatting, and we bring complaints before the UK’s Company Names Tribunal’s to procure changes of company names.

We have substantial experience helping our clients enforce and defend and their patent rights in a variety of contentious settings and jurisdictions. Our patent team is flexible and dynamic enabling us to run cases efficiently, cost-effectively and in a way that is tailored to suit each individual client’s need.

And we understand each need is different.

Our patent clients operate in a wide range of industry sectors including consumer goods, electronics, construction and engineering, software and medical devices/ healthcare.

Where there is an international dimension to our patent work that extends beyond the UK and Belgium, we are independent. We are well-accustomed to collaborating with lawyers across multiple jurisdictions to develop and deploy seamless cross-border strategies for our clients.

The interplay between IP rights and competition law continues to come under increased scrutiny from regulators and courts in the UK and across the EU. You will benefit from our lawyers’ complementary IP and competition expertise. We can help you devise compliant strategies to protect and exploit the value in your IP rights, to develop your business models, and to continue innovating.

Of course, not all disputes go to trial. We always look for opportunities to achieve settlements that make commercial sense and avoid the uncertainty and expense of litigation. We have extensive experience in negotiating settlements, either with or without mediation, or other forms of ADR.

We are thought leaders in our field.

Sara Ashby was appointed as an Assessor to Lord Justice Jackson’s 2017 Report of the use of fixed recoverable costs in litigation. Four of our partners lecture, tutor and examine on Oxford University’s Post-graduate Diploma in Intellectual Property Law and Practice and two are heavily involved in IP policy development having been elected to sit on AIPPI’s UK Council.

Carina Gommers is the Second Vice-President of ECTA, the leading European trade mark association. She is also a CEPANI approved arbitrator for domain name disputes and member of the editorial board of Oxford University Press’ Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice, IEForum.be and the BMM Bulletin (Benelux trade mark and design rights association). She regularly lectures at the VUB (Dutch speaking University of Brussels) and Carl De Meyer lectures at the Catholic University of Leuven.

We have received numerous awards and recognition for our work in relation to IP disputes, having won the Impact Case of the Year at the Managing IP Awards in 2019 (trade marks) and 2020 (copyright).