In today’s competitive automotive market, protecting your brand, designs and innovations through a robust IP strategy is essential to safeguard your competitive edge. From iconic car models to innovative design features like grilles and alloy wheels, our solicitors provide specialist and tailored IP legal support to automotive manufacturers and the broader automobile industry, helping you register and protect what sets your business apart.
Further, we are specialists in the fight against counterfeiting of automotive parts and components with our successful three-stage Anti-Counterfeiting Strategy. Our strategy assists clients in deterring infringers from selling counterfeit products and encourages them to capitulate quickly after our first legal actions are taken.
In addition, we carry out IP Audits in which we analyse our clients’ portfolios and business to ensure all potential IP rights are being covered. With our experience, we are well versed to ensure all potential IP rights are protected and your business can grow while being confident you have future proofed your IP rights.
With increasing competition and growing IP risks in the industry, your automotive IP is a business-critical legal necessity. Let our team help you secure the future of your brand and innovation.
– Legal500
Our legal services for the automotive industry include:
Our automotive disputes practice is well established and with extensive experience in litigation we are best placed to handle contentious matters. We understand settling before court action is often ideal and we successfully obtain financial settlement, undertakings and recover counterfeit goods for our clients in almost all relevant matters.
We actively seek copycat products and enforce our client’s IP against infringers with a focus on safety-critical products. This ensures the safety and quality of vehicles and their parts whilst protecting our client’s brand and reputation.
When court action is necessary, we are experienced in managing both small scale infringement and large, multijurisdictional disputes, including co-ordinating international disputes concerning clients’ core products. We approach each dispute with our client and their business in mind, ensuring all decisions not only make sense legally, but commercially too.
We also have extensive experience in signage disputes, successfully acting for our clients against third parties benefitting from unauthorised use of relevant signs on their premises, recovering counterfeit goods, domain names and supplier information.
We conduct chain of title due diligence and correcting work to ensure our clients own all their unregistered and registered IP in legacy products, including vehicles and their parts, and the external shape of a vehicle or part.
We will ensure all potential designs are protected, including UK unregistered and registered designs. For registered designs we have extensive experience if filling in the UK and internationally.
We have an excellent reputation for enforcing both rights, ensuring products are protected, monetised and licensed under comprehensive contracts where appropriate.
We also advise on trade mark strategy and protection, ensuring our clients are in the best position to expand while protecting their brand. We manage both small and large trade mark portfolios, ensuring any gaps in registrations are filled. We have extensive experience in filling for trade marks in the UK and internationally and are confident in handling any potential oppositions.
Within the Anti-Counterfeiting Program, we specifically monitor the use of your marks and will enforce your rights against any infringements.
If your brand name and/or marks are being infringed within domain names and/or being used in bad faith, we can help you recover them. Whether it is trade mark infringement, passing off and/or cybersquatting, we have extensive experience in resolving these matters.
We have successfully acted for multiple clients in recovering domain names through the Nominet’s Dispute Resolution Service and the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy.
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We’ve provided legal support for the product design industry since 1995.
We have offices in the UK, the Republic of Ireland and Malta.
We offer an industry leading service with short turnaround times and business-focused advice.
The aftermarket is an integral part of the automotive industry, however, sometimes lines are crossed and trade marks and/or designs are infringed. We can help you determine when that line has been crossed and how to stop it.
Moreover, when counterfeit products are discovered, we can help you enforce your IP rights, stopping infringing activity and protecting your brand reputation from damage.
Counterfeit products are a major issue in the automotive industry. Legally, they can be a difficult problem to solve as it often requires working across different jurisdictions.
However, we have plenty of experience in this area. We can use our skills, experiences and networks to stop counterfeiting operations in their tracks. We can help you seek compensation and protect your business from any future IP infringement.
In the automotive industry all IP rights can apply, trade marks, design rights, copyright and patents. We can help you determine which rights apply across all business operations.
From well-established trade marks to design rights over innovative parts and accessories, we can identify, protect and enforce your IP rights. Which rights apply and how best to enforce them depends on the specific product and your commercial goals. For bespoke advice, get in touch.
Briffa’s specialist solicitors have been practising intellectual property law in the UK and Europe for over twenty-five years. Meet our team and see the faces behind our success stories.
We’re on hand to assist with a wide range of IP issues, just get in touch to find out more.
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