A Lichfield engineer who has spent twenty years designing components for the automotive firms around Birmingham leaves to start a consultancy from a spare room in Burntwood, and discovers that the drawings on his laptop belong to his old employer. Intellectual property solicitors in Lichfield see a steady stream of this: professionals who have worked in the region's big industries coming home to start something of their own and needing to know what they can take with them, what their contracts forbid, and how to protect what they create next.
Lichfield's own economy is small and largely made up of independent businesses, which gives its IP work a particular shape. Cafés, bakers and brewers need registered trade marks before a bigger rival takes the name; the craftspeople and designers who sell at the market and during the Lichfield Festival need to understand copyright and unregistered design right; software developers, marketing consultancies and the small engineering firms around Fradley need confidentiality agreements, licences and clear terms about who owns the work they do for clients. Almost none of them has an IP budget, so the advice has to be proportionate.
The mechanics are the same as anywhere: registration of trade marks and designs at the UK Intellectual Property Office, assignments and licences, letters before action that resolve most infringements, and, if a claim is unavoidable, the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court with its capped costs and £500,000 limit on damages. Patents are handled with a patent attorney. Registrations and standard documents are usually priced as fixed fees; disputes by the hour.
Few Lichfield firms are IP specialists, and for a large or technical matter the firms in Birmingham are close at hand. The solicitors listed below offer intellectual property advice around Lichfield, verified firms first; see what intellectual property law covers, the general IP solicitors guide, the IP solicitors in Birmingham page, and business law solicitors in Lichfield for company matters.
