Trade marks

It’s important to ensure the claims in your trade mark application match your business’ goods and services. We carefully drafting the trade mark’s specification to help provide maximum protection for your brand and avoid clashes with other trader’s marks.

Developing a global brand strategy requires professional advice regarding registered and unregistered trade marks that may create barriers to registration and may result in litigation in certain markets.

Choosing the wrong trade mark can be a very costly mistake, especially if you have already gone to market with a ‘risky’ brand.

Extensive local and global clearance searches for a prospective trade mark helps to identify potential registrability and infringement risks in target markets.

Responding to infringement claims and enforcing your IP rights is an essential element of trade mark protection.

Extensive experience assists when responding to examiner’s concerns and other barriers to trade mark registration.

An effective tool in the form of a letter of consent or a more formal structured agreement to resolve disputes and barriers to registration.

Trade marks licence agreements are often used with third parties for a specific commercial purpose, or between related business entities for strategic reasons.

When permanently transferring ownership of intellectual property rights, we carefully draft these agreements to capture all relevant the commercial terms and ensure appropriate protections and exclusions are covered.

At times, it is necessary to oppose another party’s trade mark application to protect your trade marks. We assist clients with this technical and often complex process.

Non-use actions often occur when an earlier trade mark is cited as a barrier to a trade marks registration, and it emerges that the trade mark has not been used by its owner.

Protecting your trade marks is an important aspect of any branding strategy and is at the core of ensuring third parties do not infringe your IP rights and keeping on top of formalities and renews.

These services are often used in relation earlier trade marks cited in adverse examination reports, non-use action and opposition matters.

We provide trade mark monitoring services to protect our client’s valuable trade mark portfolios.

As trade mark attorneys and IP lawyers, we have extensive experience in drafting submissions and assisting clients with declarations to provide the strongest position in all aspects of trade mark registration and prosecution.

Often negotiation is the best path to progressing our client’s position or establishing common ground with third parties to resolve disputes as efficiently and expeditiously as possible.

We guide clients through this process and draft submissions to prosecute our client’s position based on the relevant circumstances.