Newcastle Brown Ale has not been brewed on Tyneside for years, yet the name and the blue star still sell beer around the world. That is intellectual property doing its job: the brand outlived the brewery. The businesses that make up Newcastle's modern economy, the games studios, the software firms, the life-science and data companies at Newcastle Helix, the designers and makers of the Ouseburn valley, are learning the same lesson, that what they own is often a name, a design, a line of code or a dataset rather than a building.
Intellectual property solicitors in Newcastle register trade marks and designs with the UK Intellectual Property Office, draft the licences, assignments and non-disclosure agreements that let an idea be sold or shared safely, and sort out who owns work created by freelancers, students and employees. Spin-outs from Newcastle University and Northumbria University need ownership and confidentiality agreements before they talk to investors, and where the research is patentable the solicitor works alongside a patent attorney. The city's games studios raise their own questions about contractors' code, publisher contracts and the rights in characters and artwork, and the bars and restaurants of Grainger Town discover that a good name is worth registering the day a copy opens across the river in Gateshead.
Infringement is handled first with a letter before action, and most disputes end there. Those that do not can be issued in the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court, which caps damages at £500,000 and limits recoverable costs, or for larger claims in the High Court, where the preliminary stages can be dealt with through the district registry in Newcastle.
Registrations and standard agreements are usually fixed-fee; disputes are charged by the hour.
Firms offering intellectual property advice around Newcastle are listed below, verified ones first. Read what intellectual property law covers, the general IP solicitors page and, for company matters, business law solicitors in Newcastle.
