Since 2005 we have been registering and managing trademarks, copyright and other IP for clients around the world. One of the fastest growing aspects of our business is trademark renewals and trademark formalities. Any business with a trademark portfolio can benefit from a dedicated service looking after their renewal needs. This frees up resources and [...]

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Most people who start a business unknowingly neglect trademark issues when naming their business and products. Having developed the business concept and planned how they are going to sell their goods or services, most people these days then start to consider a domain name in order to have some sort of web presence. Finding an [...]

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Three years after a German court ruled that JOOP! could not register its ! on its own, the EU have handed down a decision which backs this up. Not that the fashion world were worried about not being able to use ! after every sentence!

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As more and more IP owners have discovered, protecting your name does not stop at a trade mark. As highlighted by the recent Facebook name grab, it is important that brand owners protect their right by registering their names as usernames on Facebook and other social networking sites. The cost to the brand if it [...]

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The revision of the EU TM fees will take effect on May 1st this year.

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Google and LVMH are back in court this week over the use of trademarked terms in when used in adwords. Google’s current stance in the UK is that trademarked terms can be utilised as a search term to generate the display of competitors’ adverts, but cannot be used within the text of the advert itself. [...]

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We have today received the UKIPO consultation document which sets out proposed changes to the system of applying for and registering trademarks in the UK. The main thrust of the consultation is that official fees will drop by varying amounts depending how the trademark is applied for. This seems to be in direct response to [...]

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We learn that the EU is going to change the price of its application and registration fees as this is the only way to ultimately reduce the surplus they currently enjoy. With the devaluation of sterling, this will probably bring them in £ terms to where they were a year ago! Watch this space.

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Whilst trade marks are the main focus for most brand owners, inevitably all owners of IP rights will own some items of copyright. This can range from imagery, music, ad copy to more obscure elements such as typefaces or source code. It is important for brand owners to recognise the importance of copyright especially when [...]

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Background In October 2007, the UK trade mark registry (UKIPO) changed the way in which they dealt with the citation of exact or similar marks, in relation to new applications. Before this date, if a new trade mark was applied for which was the same or similar to an existing mark and applied for in [...]

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