Trade Marks

Distinguish your brand from competitors and create value in your business through your trade mark

Ensuring your trade marks are protected prevents others from unfairly capitalising on your brand and reputation. Carefully managing and strategically exploiting trade marks with the support of a trade mark solicitor, as well as robustly defending them when necessary, will help build your brand and protect your reputation and valuable IP assets.

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Trade Mark Solicitors

It’s likely that your business will deal with trade marks at some point, whether they are your own trade marks or those of third parties. Protecting your trade mark is an important step in protecting your brand’s name and/or logo, and the goodwill and reputation associated with that branding.

Review and assess your current trade mark portfolio
Create a trade mark strategy to support business growth
Help take your trade mark global
Manage your trade mark portfolio
Protect your trade mark from competition
Set up a trade mark watch to monitor trade mark applications that are similar to your brand
Enforce your trade mark against infringers
Exploit your trade mark by licensing it to third parties to use
Offer advice, tools, and training so your team are equipped for success

Our expert trade mark solicitors will help you protect the reputation of your business and distinguish your brand from your competitors. They will also help you identify which intellectual property services and protections would best suit your needs, and the best strategies to exploit your intellectual property. Start-ups, SMEs, creatives, entrepreneurs, and growing organisations can all benefit from protecting their trade marks.

Our team of intellectual property solicitors can:

Identify what may qualify for trade mark protection – a trade mark can include a name, word, logo, sound, colour or any combination of those, so long as they are distinctive
Help you consider what to register in the context of your wider intellectual property and business strategy
Explain and advise on your legal rights with trade marks
Advise on whether your trade mark should be registered and, if so, how to register it
Support you with the application process both in the UK and internationally and provide advice in relation to oppositions
Support you with resolving disputes efficiently and effectively to protect your brand – enforcing your rights and defending your trade mark from infringement by others, as well as defending you from infringement claims, both in the UK and abroad. We use alternative dispute resolution methods where possible to save time and minimise costs
Manage and protect your trade marks using industry leading technology ensuring competition does not infringe your trade mark and you do not infringe on other trade marks
Provide advice on trade mark clauses in commercial agreements, employment contracts and corporate documents
Draft trade mark licences
Draft non-disclosure agreements to protect your intellectual property if you have to disclose it to third parties
Advise you on the sale or transfer of a trade mark (also known as an assignment)
Support you with day-to-day trade mark portfolio management, such as renewals
Dealing with ‘passing off’ actions
Advise you on your IP rights in the context of franchising
Create a trade mark strategy to help achieve business goals
Offer training so you have the tools to exploit your trade mark

Read our Trade Mark FAQs for lots of useful information on the basics of trademark law.

What are the benefits of protecting your trade marks and actively managing your trade mark portfolio?

Protect your brand

Understanding what intellectual property you have in your business and the best way to protect this is a crucial part of your broader business strategy – you can only take the rights steps to safeguard value in your business when you know what you need to protect!

Reduce your administrative burden

Applying for a trade mark includes pitfalls for the unwary that are tricky to rectify and could leave you without the protection you need. Ensuring you get the application right first time will guard against this. A trade mark solicitor can also help with managing your portfolio day-to-day, for example by handling the renewal process on your behalf to ensure you don’t miss an important renewal deadline

Create new revenue streams

By carefully licensing-out your trade mark to other organisations, you will generate valuable additional revenue. You may also benefit from the reputation of third-party brands by licensing-in the use of their trade marks

Ensure your business is attractive to potential investors and buyers

If you have an investment opportunity or exit strategy in mind, you need to ensure that your trade marks (and other IP) are in order – a serious investor or prospective buyer will want to see that you have taken steps to protect your brand

Defend your brand and save time and money with efficient dispute resolution

Defending your brand robustly, and efficiently and effectively dealing with potential issues, will help to ensure that further damage to your brand is limited and that costs are minimised

Trade Mark Management Support

Harper James offers you industry leading trade mark solicitors who take the time to truly understand your business and identify the best way to protect and exploit your intellectual property.

Whether you’re registering, safeguarding, defending, or exploiting your branding, we’re on hand to support you from your ‘big idea’ and beyond. We have industry leading trade mark solicitors, many with experience of working in-house in businesses, on hand to offer you a truly tailored service.

Our team are more than just trade mark solicitors, they’re an extension of your business who can help you dominate the market and differentiate your brand.

By offering a holistic approach, our trade mark solicitors can offer comprehensive, ongoing support with the following:

Trade mark assessments

We will review and assess your current intellectual property, and your trade marks if you have any registered. We will then review your business goals and offer pragmatic advice on how you could develop your intellectual property strategy for commercial success. We will also highlight any risk areas and suggest ways you can protect your trade mark and your brand.

Trade mark registration

If you haven’t registered your trade mark, our trade mark solicitors can deal with all the paper work and give your business the best chance of having the trade mark application accepted. This could save you the cost of making subsequent re-applications. If your application is unsuccessful, or we envision your application being unsuccessful, we will help you create a trade mark strategy to ensure success.

Trade mark strategy

Using findings from our initial audit, our trade mark solicitors will help draft a comprehensive intellectual property strategy, including ways you can safeguard your trade mark and how you can use your strategy to achieve your overall business goals. We will also help you set detailed and specific actions and objectives, creating a clear ‘action plan’ on how to implement your strategy within your business.

A trade mark strategy can help with the following goals:

Overall business growth
Achieve a successful trade mark registration
Expansion in the UK or overseas
Achieve success with investment opportunities
Add value to the sale of a business

Trade mark portfolio management

A significant portion of your trade mark strategy will be allocated to the protection of your intellectual property and trade marks. A trade mark solicitor managing your trade mark portfolio will:

Remove your business as first point of contact for potential trade mark infringement allegations
Allow all infringement allegations against your business to be researched and responded to in a timely manner
Manage all trade mark disputes
Have your portfolio constantly reviewed for potential infringement breaches, against and by your business
Monitor third party trade mark applications to identify trade mark applications that are similar to your brand
Have a legal professional deal with all paperwork and documents relating to your trade mark and intellectual property

Training & support

Having a trade mark solicitor manage your trade mark portfolio, and help create your trade mark strategy, will provide your business with tailored legal support. This means a trade mark solicitor will embed themselves into your business and offer pragmatic and invaluable advice and support in order to achieve your business goals. Examples of how we have supported firms are:

Training marketing teams on how to correctly communicate their businesses brands online
Training licensees how to correctly communicate brand identity
Drafting documents to encourage affiliate marketing, so businesses remain in control over how their brand is communicated
Offering advice on marketing and branding to ensure trade mark protection e.g. advice on website design, marketing assets etc.

Harper James can offer one off support for businesses or you can take advantage of our enterprise subscription scheme allowing you to have your own in-house legal function at an affordable cost.

Trade Mark Infringement Solicitors

If someone has infringed your trade mark

If someone uses your trade mark without permission, or if you think someone is using or trying to use a trade mark similar to yours, this may be an intellectual property infringement. It’s strongly advised that your first action is to seek legal advice from a trade mark solicitor and take corrective action against the person committing the infringement.

If the matter is not resolved, our trade mark solicitor can act on your behalf and begin legal proceedings. This can be costly, and our trade mark solicitors will always seek alternative dispute resolution, to reduce the amount of cost and time of the proceedings.

If you have been accused of trade mark infringement

You may accidentally infringe on the trade mark of another business. This can happen if you’ve developed your business and branding and unknowingly started using the branding for services/goods which a third party has a registered trade mark for.

If you’ve been accused of trade mark infringement, it’s important to get legal advice from a trade mark solicitor immediately. Acting quickly can ensure the matter is resolved in a timely matter, and that you do not make any actions which can make the situation worse. A trade mark solicitor will aim to resolve the disputes as efficiently as possible, with as little disruption to your business activity as possible.

Read our Trade Mark FAQs for lots of useful information on how to manage trade mark infringements.

Pricing plans

Our three transparent pricing packages are designed to give you the widest possible access to high-quality legal advice, whatever the size and nature of your business:

City

Straightforward access to senior solicitors at a competitive rate.

An affordable solution for businesses needing one-off legal support. Receive ‘City’ partner-level expertise at a fraction of ‘City’ prices.

Enterprise

Have legal peace of mind for £189 per month with additional support from £125 per hour.

A monthly subscription legal support package specifically designed for start-ups and smaller businesses.

On-Demand

Providing you with priority access to a dedicated panel of highly experienced solicitors.

Fully account managed quarterly subscription service for businesses with more complex legal needs.

Learn more about our pricing plans

What our clients say

We pride ourselves on delivering an excellent service for clients, but don’t just take our word for it.

Amanda and Gemma were extremely accommodating at the lack of time we could dedicate to supporting the trademark applications and utilised the data we supplied to complete the applications in a speedy timeframe which was very much appreciated.

Jenny James, COO
Findr Global

Harper James removes the stress for us. I know that we can get advice quickly, without some sort of golden clock being turned on when you pick up the phone. This means we can focus on running the business.

Tom Davenport, Co-Founder
TalentPool

The on-demand service we get from Harper James allows us to combine their expertise with that of our own in-house counsel. It means we can get quick and trustworthy legal advice from specialists in every legal area, as and when we need it. There are no hidden extras and the service we have received has always demonstrated an awareness of our fast-moving commercial requirements.

Amelia Guilfoyle, Head of legal
Zoopla

Knowing you have that level of legal support enables any new business to be able to move forward with more confidence. With Harper James we have that – and more.

Julian Cook, CEO and Co-Founder
Howamigoing

First class service – initial advice very good and then delivery on said advice. Wasn't a complicated request but can't fault the service and Lindsay would always be my go to contact for any legal work in the UK

Bruce Haxton, Founder
The Tuk Tuk Club

Harper James Solicitors provides excellent value for money and helps to cover gaps in specialist areas of legal practice. Using an outside legal provider enables us, as a business, to better manage our internal resources, the volume of work we have and to deal with our level of overall risk. I would undoubtedly recommend them to others.

Robert Cowling, General Counsel
FleetCor

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Trade Marks

Distinguish your brand from competitors and create value in your business through your trade mark

Trade Mark Solicitors