Walk through the Jewellery Quarter and you are walking past disputes waiting to happen: a ring design that appears in a rival's window within a month, a hallmark struck at the Birmingham Assay Office on a piece copied from someone else's drawings. Design right, registered designs, copyright in the drawings and the trade mark on the box are the tools an intellectual property solicitor in Birmingham uses to deal with it.
The Quarter is only the most visible example. The city's automotive and aerospace suppliers hold patents and, more often, trade secrets that need confidentiality agreements before a new process is shown to a customer. Spin-outs from the University of Birmingham and Aston University license their research. Birmingham's food brands, restaurants, fashion labels and music scene all live on trade marks and copyright, and every one of them eventually finds a copycat online.
The practical work splits in two. Filing and prosecuting patents and complex trade marks is usually done by patent and trade mark attorneys, of which Birmingham has several firms. Solicitors handle the contracts around the rights: licences, assignments, franchise agreements, non-disclosure agreements and the IP clauses in a business sale. They also handle enforcement, which in the Midlands no longer means a trip to London. The Business and Property Courts in Birmingham, at the Civil and Family Justice Centre, can hear intellectual property claims, and the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court's procedure, with capped costs and damages limited to £500,000, keeps smaller claims affordable wherever they are heard. Most disputes end with a letter before action, a takedown or a licence rather than a trial.
Fixed fees are common for trade mark filings and standard agreements; infringement work is charged by the hour.
Intellectual property firms around Birmingham are listed below, verified firms first and the remainder by distance. See what intellectual property law covers, the general guide to IP solicitors, and business law solicitors in Birmingham for wider commercial work.
