IP Legal Basics

All businesses generate and own intellectual property. Whether you are a sole trader, a small start up or blue chip company, the Waterfront Partnership has the legal and commercial expertise to provide comprehensive advice on a full range of intellectual property related issues. We will identify, protect and help you to exploit your intellectual property for maximum commercial gain.

In the development stage of any product (be it, for example, a physical device or a service that is provided over the internet), you must ensure that the intellectual property associated with your new product (i) does not infringe any third party intellectual property and (ii) is protected to the fullest extent possible. Everything should be kept confidential and you should consider early in the development process whether to apply for patents, trade marks and design rights.

By putting in place robustly drafted documentation such as research & development agreements, non-disclosure agreements and consultancy agreements you will preserve and enhance your intellectual property rights going forward. For more details of the IP issues that should be considered from the start of every project, see Developing IP.

The Waterfront Partnership can assess what method of protecting intellectual property rights makes most commercial sense for you. We can manage registration processes to minimise any impact such as lost man-hours to your business. For further information on how to secure you intellectual property rights see Protecting IP

Strengthening your intellectual property assets gives you business increased leverage to exploit your intellectual property assets to the full. We can help to achieve this, whether via licensing, sale or other contracts with third parties. Click on Exploiting IP for more information.

We can assist you to monitor your competitor’s activities so as to facilitate early identification of infringements of your intellectual property rights.

The Waterfront Partnership advises on the likely chances of successfully litigating or defending a legal action and specialises in devising litigation strategies tailored to your business goals. Whether you decide to enforce your intellectual property in the Courts or settle, we have the legal experience to offer a full litigation service and/or to successfully negotiate the best terms of settlement for you.

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