Intellectual property

Our intellectual property team offers clients a full range of intellectual property services based on wide experience gained at international law firms, patent attorney firms, and in public sector policy and industry roles.

We act for a wide range of public and private sector clients on intellectual property related issues, including patent and brand protection, in New Zealand and overseas.

Our national intellectual property team is led by Partner Hamish Selby and senior practitioners John Glengarry (Consultant) and Sophie Thoreau (Special Counsel).  With harmonisation of Australian and New Zealand intellectual property laws opening the two markets to practitioners from both countries, the team regularly files and prosecutes trade mark and design applications directly in Australia and New Zealand.

The team files directly in a number of Pacific Island nations and has a network of experienced trade mark agents and other intellectual property practitioners around the world which it uses to help protect clients' brands and other intellectual property elsewhere.

Given the multitude of copyright issues in the intellectual property area, all our practitioners are experienced in copyright law.  We also offer patent advisory and dispute services.  We help select and brief appropriate patent attorneys for patent registry matters.

We provide intellectual property establishment, registration, management and transactional services and complement this by offering a full range of dispute resolution services, including litigation.

Our services include creating trade marks and clearing trade marks and designs for use and registration, registering trade marks and designs, preventing registration and getting trade marks and designs off registers, managing trade mark and design portfolios, including trade mark watching services and renewals, documenting and recording intellectual property transfers such as assignments and licences, dealing with securities over intellectual property, strategic intellectual property advice including due diligence and intellectual property registration programmes, unregistered trade mark protection (passing off and the Fair Trading Act), domain name registration and domain name disputes, advertising standards complaints and broadcasting standards complaints, patent advisory, dispute resolution and litigation, copyright, transactional support (financing and structuring, licensing, franchising, and research and development), anti-counterfeiting and dispute resolution, including registered and unregistered trade mark, patent and copyright litigation.