A Goldsmiths graduate sets up as a designer in a shared studio in Deptford, does a logo and a website for a café on the high street, is paid, and a year later sees the logo on the café's new branches, its packaging and a franchise brochure. Who owns it? Unless the invoice or a contract said otherwise, the designer does, and the café has a problem. Intellectual property solicitors in Lewisham see this from both sides, and the cure is the same: an assignment or a licence written down before the work is used. The same applies to the photographers, illustrators, musicians, game developers and film-makers who leave Goldsmiths and the Laban conservatoire each summer and stay in New Cross, Deptford and Brockley.
Lewisham's creative economy is mostly freelancers and tiny companies, and its intellectual property questions are correspondingly practical: whether a band's name can be registered as a trade mark before a rival uses it, who owns recordings made in a friend's studio, how a collective shares the rights in what it makes, and what to do when a design is lifted by a retailer. The borough's year as London Borough of Culture in 2022 produced a great deal of commissioned work, and commissioning contracts are where ownership is decided.
Enforcement normally means a firm letter and a negotiated licence fee. Where it goes further, the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court, with capped costs and a £500,000 ceiling on damages, is sized for small claimants. Patents are rare in the borough and handled with a patent attorney.
Trade mark registrations and standard agreements are usually fixed-fee; disputes are charged by the hour.
Intellectual property firms serving Lewisham are listed below, verified first. See what intellectual property law covers, the general IP solicitors guide and, for company matters, business law solicitors in Lewisham; the London IP page lists the capital's specialists.
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