The leading English case on football merchandise was fought over a stall outside Highbury. A trader who had sold unofficial scarves and shirts there for decades argued that fans bought them as badges of loyalty, not as goods from the club; Arsenal argued that its name and crest were registered trade marks and that was the end of it. Arsenal won, after a trip to the European court, and every football club in the country now relies on the result. Intellectual property in Islington mixes the everyday and the serious: match-day counterfeits on Holloway Road, and Clerkenwell and Old Street businesses whose entire value is what they have created.
For the Clerkenwell studios the questions are about design right and copyright. A chair, a lamp or a typeface shown at Clerkenwell Design Week is protected by unregistered design right from the moment it is drawn, but only for a limited time and only against copying; registering it at the Intellectual Property Office is cheap and far easier to enforce. Architects need to know that their drawings are theirs unless the appointment says otherwise. Software companies around Old Street need the opposite reassurance: that the contractors who wrote the code assigned it, that the open-source components do not infect the product, and that the app's name was cleared before launch.
An IP solicitor in Islington registers trade marks and designs, drafts licences, assignments and confidentiality agreements, and deals with infringement, usually by letter and negotiation. Cases that must be litigated are issued in the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court at the Rolls Building, where costs are capped and damages limited to £500,000, which keeps a studio's claim against a copyist affordable. Patents involve a patent attorney alongside the solicitor.
Registrations and standard agreements are usually fixed-fee; disputes are hourly.
IP firms serving Islington are listed below, verified first. Read what intellectual property law covers, the general IP solicitors guide and, for company and investment matters, business law solicitors in Islington.
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