Brand Protection and Intellectual Property

Hemming+Hart’s specialist Brand Protection and Intellectual Property team is comprised of experienced lawyers who each have recognised expertise in the delivery of practical tailored legal solutions to companies with nationally and internationally known brands.

In fact, our legal expertise, combined with our commercial insight and industry knowledge has helped many of our brand protection and intellectual property clients develop into market leaders, with many now recognised as having iconic and household-name brands.

Expertise

Our Brand Protection and Intellectual Property team are able to provide the following legal services:

• Trademarks
  • advice on brand creation and meeting trade mark registration requirements in Australia and overseas;
  • filing of trade mark applications locally and internationally, including via the Madrid Protocol;
  • prosecution of trade mark applications, including appearance at hearings;
  • defending actions for trade mark removal;
  • acting in opposition proceedings; and
  • trade mark clearance, searching and watching services.
• strategic advice on brand protection and trade mark enforcement (including proactive steps to combat breach of trade mark rights, passing off and misleading and deceptive trade practices of competitors);
• advice on the protection, enforcement and commercialisation of other intellectual property rights, including copyright, designs, patents and confidential information;
• in-house training to directors, product managers and marketing personnel on topics such as trade marks, copyright, passing off, misleading and deceptive conduct and general intellectual property compliance;
• prepare and review internal intellectual property manuals and policies;
• advice and preparing various documents and policies related to laws governing e-commerce;
• strategic distribution, franchising and supply chain advice;
• advice on trade practices, competition and consumer protection law and dealing with the ACCC in respect of authorisations, notifications, complaints, investigations and prosecutions;
• handle all forms of intellectual property litigation and dispute resolution, including:
  • trade mark and intellectual property enforcement matters;
  • actions for breach of contract and breach of confidence; and
  • trade practices matters;
• specialist capital raising advice to our brand protection and intellectual property clients, including seed capital, IPO and stock exchange listings, rights issues, employee share plans and private placements; and
• advice to our brand protection and intellectual property clients on strategic and large scale acquisitions and on trade sales.

Recent transactions

A selection of recent transactions our brand protection and intellectual property team has been involved in includes:

• advising on and executing the brand protection strategies for  several national, well known consumer brands (including a market-leading security products brand, market-leading garage and shed manufacturer, a national residential home building franchise network and a market-leading national butchery chain);
• acting for several high profile brands in relation to the operation and expansion of their retail and service networks (including in the retail petrol service station, waste disposal, fitness, retail furniture and retail food industries);acting for several high profile brands in relation to their national and international distribution and franchise strategies (including in the real estate, residential home building, construction equipment, security products, alcoholic beverage and pet products industries);
• advising on competition law compliance issues for a national real estate franchise chain and Queensland’s largest privately owned independent fuel distributor and retail petrol service station chain; and
• advising a start-up IT company on all aspects of establishing an online shopping mall (as a competitor of e-bay and Amazon), including all seed capital raising, corporate governance, brand protection and e-commerce issues.