Broadcasting rights, programme formats, streaming licences and sports footage are negotiated every day in Hounslow, at Sky's campus in Osterley and among the media and entertainment companies at Chiswick Business Park and along the Great West Road. That gives intellectual property solicitors in Hounslow a different caseload from most suburban boroughs: more licensing and content agreements, more copyright questions about who owns footage, music and software, and more disputes about brands that are known in several countries.
Smaller businesses have intellectual property too. Restaurants and food brands in Hounslow town, Brentford's growing number of independent shops and breweries, aviation service companies in Feltham with specialist software, and the designers and photographers who work from flats in Chiswick all need to know which rights they own and how to keep them. A registered trade mark protects a name or logo; copyright arises automatically in writing, images, code and music but has to be proved; registered and unregistered design rights cover the appearance of products; and patents, usually handled with a patent attorney, cover inventions. Confidentiality agreements protect an idea before any of those rights exist.
An IP solicitor in Hounslow files applications at the Intellectual Property Office and responds to oppositions, drafts licences, assignments and non-disclosure agreements, and deals with infringement, usually by a letter before action that ends the matter. Where it does not, the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court in central London hears smaller claims with capped costs and damages of up to £500,000, and larger disputes go to the Chancery Division.
Registrations and standard documents are generally fixed-fee; contested matters are billed by the hour.
Intellectual property firms near Hounslow appear below, verified firms first. Read the explainer on intellectual property law, the general guide to IP solicitors, the London IP page for the capital's specialist firms, and the business law solicitors in Hounslow page for company matters.
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