Our Services
Our trade mark experts understand brands, their power and their importance to your business. We help you to protect, enforce and manage brand portfolios, as well as support the maximisation of brands as strategic assets. Whether you want to build a robust trade mark portfolio or make sure your existing portfolio is effectively managed and enforced to the full, we can help.
We enjoy working with our clients as an extension of their own team, in relation to all of their IP rights but especially their trade marks. We learn about their businesses and share their passion for their brands. This invested approach, combined with our experience helps us to provide commercially relevant legal advice and feedback. This means much more than simply conducting a trade mark search, applying to register a trade mark or managing your renewals (all of which we can of course do). It means working with you at a more sophisticated level than simple day-to day case management, as a strategic partner and advisor to your business.
Strategic Trade Mark Advice
Creation, Clearance & Protection
- Registrability advice
- Screening & full clearance searching
- Application strategy
- Filing & prosecution
Enforcement & Dispute Resolution
- Oppositions & cancellations
- Infringement litigation
- Contentious Proceedings
Commercial Transactions, Licensing & Exploitation
- Transaction, mergers & assignments
- Licences
Portfolio management
- Watching
- Renewals
Enforcement & Dispute Resolution
Once trade mark protection is in place, we are skilled and experienced with the enforcement of our clients’ rights. We handle pre-action strategy and correspondence with adverse parties, as well as the filing and contesting of oppositions, cancellations, revocations and appeals at the UKIPO, DPMA and EUIPO when that becomes necessary in order to protect our clients’ interests.
Our team has an excellent reputation for handling contentious proceedings on behalf of clients at the UKIPO, the EUIPO and the DPMA. We represent clients at oral hearings and appeals at the UKIPO and have also been involved in appeal procedures before both English Courts and the Courts of the European Union, in particular the General Court.
Additionally, our trade mark attorneys in the UK work alongside specialist IP solicitors in our Legal team to handle trade mark litigation matters at the UK courts. In Germany, our team of attorneys-at-law advise our clients on litigation strategy and directly represent them in actions before German civil courts.
We also have long-standing experience of managing international disputes in key jurisdictions, through a network of trusted IP business partner firms to provide critical local legal advice and support.
As well as advising about the enforcement of registered trade mark rights, our trade mark experts can also provide guidance on all of the issues surrounding unregistered trade mark rights, including passing off in the UK.
We seek to deal with IP disputes practically and commercially, which can involve a range of different options and strategies to maximise your outcomes, importantly including dispute resolution. We recognise that a sensible and reasonable settlement can often represent a better commercial outcome for our clients. We regularly advise on all aspects of settlements, from tactics and negotiation strategies, to drafting agreements or undertakings, including providing an international dimension when needed.
Creation, Clearance & Protection
Before we can help our clients to protect their brands, the first step is to provide advice about their creation. We help clients to understand what marks may or may not be registrable and the appropriate classes, goods and services they should choose.
Clearance searches are the important next step in the process and should be completed before adopting a new brand, launching new products, or expanding into a new jurisdiction. Searching will give a view on whether or not it is safe to use (and register) the proposed mark without infringing someone else’s existing trade mark rights. We can submit applications worldwide, directly at the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO), the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), the German Trade Mark Office (DPMA) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and respond to any official objections raised against an application. If there are issues with your proposed trade mark, we will work with you to try to help you to find a solution that works – both commercially for your business and so that your trade mark can be successfully registered.
If the searches are clear and we’re good to go, our trade mark team can put together a cost-effective registration strategy, before completing and filing an application in order to obtain legal protection for your brand. Where there is a choice of routes to protection, we can advise on the appropriate strategy that best meets your business objectives and budgets.
Commercial Transactions, Licensing & Exploitation
Our experienced trade mark team can provide a range trade mark portfolio management services, which saves our clients from spending the time and resources managing this themselves. We handle the critically important task of the renewal of our clients’ trade mark registrations, including the monitoring of renewal deadlines and the sending of timely reminders.
We can also help to keep trade mark registrations up- to-date, by recording any changes of name or address at the relevant trade mark office, as well as setting up trade mark watching services to ensure alerts are provided for any trade mark applications filed by third parties that are too close to your registered rights.
We have also worked with many clients on a wide range of transactions involving IP, including transfers of ownership, mergers and acquisitions, and providing due diligence advice to assist with funding rounds.
The options available will depend on each client’s own business goals, but we can support you in all areas where you might need commercial advice, such as licences, franchise agreements and other kinds of contracts involving trade marks and other IP rights.
Our team of professionals always keep in mind that our client’s trade marks are assets. We can work with you to help with their commercial exploitation.
Portfolio management
One of the most important considerations for your brand is how your trade mark portfolio is managed. A successful brand could have hundreds of different trade marks registered across multiple continents, all of which must be properly looked after if the wider business is to remain sufficiently protected. There are numerous challenges that all brands face when it comes to building and then managing their trade marks as a portfolio of assets. The key is to have a clear strategy with the wider short, medium and long-term goals of the brand(s) defined, this includes your specific goals regarding which products or services need protection and where. Whatever your trade mark portfolio size, we take the time to understand your business so we can we provide you with a portfolio management strategy that meets your objectives now and into the future as your business grows, working alongside you to implement it.
© 2026 Mewburn Ellis
