Walk through North Laine or the streets behind Hove station and most of the businesses have no stock to speak of: games studios, design agencies, app developers, illustrators, podcast producers, festival organisers and a long tail of freelancers. What they own is intellectual property, and intellectual property solicitors in Brighton & Hove exist because of them. The questions are rarely about patents. They are about who owns the code a contractor wrote, whether a client can reuse a design after the contract ended, and what a licence should say before a small studio signs with a publisher.
Trade marks are the most common instruction. A Brighton & Hove bar, brewery, clothing label or software product needs a name that can be registered at the UK Intellectual Property Office and defended, and a search before launch is far cheaper than a rebrand after a letter from a bigger company. Copyright arises automatically in software, images, music and writing, but ownership has to be documented, and the city's many freelance arrangements leave gaps that only surface when the relationship sours. Design rights protect the look of products sold by the city's makers and fashion labels. The two universities generate spin-outs and research agreements, and the games and immersive technology companies around the city need confidentiality agreements and licences in place before they pitch to investors or publishers.
Most disputes are settled by a letter before action or a negotiated licence. Those that go further are usually taken to the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court in London, where costs are capped and damages are limited to £500,000. Patents are normally handled with a patent attorney.
Expect fixed prices for registrations and standard agreements, and hourly billing for disputes.
The IP firms serving Brighton & Hove are listed below, verified firms first. Read what intellectual property law covers, the general IP solicitors guide and, for company structures and contracts, business law solicitors in Brighton & Hove.
