Intellectual Property

Brand, trademark and IP protection

Your brand, trade marks and intellectual property are at the core of your business but protecting those assets is a whole lot harder in today’s connected digital marketplace. Luxury brands, technology companies, consumer giants – no company is immune from threats of counterfeiting, passing off and other IP infringements. It’s a global problem (counterfeiting represents as much as 2.5 % of world trade) and any remedy must be global in scope.

Prevention is always better than cure. In our long experience of working with leading brands, technology companies and ambitious start-ups means we understand the importance of getting things right at the beginning. As one of a handful of UK legal practices with an international trade mark capability we can work with you from initial creation through filing and clearance, protection and enforcement to unlocking and securing value from ongoing management of your brand assets.

If something does go wrong, we’re experts in protecting high profile brands from the sale of lookalikes and verifying the authenticity of branded products for resale.

We’re also keen to help you uncover new ways to maximise the value of your IP. Our brand analysis and audit advice will give you a fresh perspective on your IP portfolio, helping you to consolidate and grow brand value plus reduce costs wherever possible.

Key contact

Rachael Barber Partner rbarber@deloitte.co.uk +44 (0)20 7007 8940

Prevent, prepare, react: mitigating and managing digital reputation risk

Your Content Creation, Advertising Rules, Influencers, Vloggers, User Generated Content, Defamatory Content, IP Infringements, Intermediary Liability, Employee Social Media Use, #, Memes, Gifs, Deep Fakes, Fake News, Hyperlinks, De-listings, Take-Downs, Disputes…

Digital content risk and adverse social media events feature highly in corporate incidents, typically featuring in the top 10 risk priorities for corporates. Ecommerce, social media engagement and digital brand profile are critical for growing brand value and for engaging with consumers; but digital content can easily go wrong.

We take a unique holistic approach, combining digital content risk with reputation management, to reflect the different facets of content risk and the reputational harm of adverse events.

At Deloitte Legal, we have particular expertise in mitigating and managing digital and social media adverse reputational events. Our digital content risk team understands the heads of digital risks. We adopt a holistic three-stage approach:

• Prevent: assess and put in place risk management processes and tools to mitigate against adverse reputation events occurring, particularly in relation to social media use
• Prepare: ensure that procedures are in place to effectively manage adverse reputation events and to limit the damage caused
• React: properly handle adverse events when those do occur

The potential for reputational harm is high. Damaging content about your company or brand can go viral and spin out of your control very fast.

Our experts include reputation management specialists who act across the full spectrum of reputation management, acting for both claimant and defendant and against the major press/media.

How Deloitte Legal can help

• Your content creation and clearance
• Advertising
• User generated content
• IP infringements
• Defamatory content
• Intermediary liability
• Social media risks
• Memes
• Gifs
• Deep fakes
• Fake news
• Hyperlinks
• De-listings
• Take-downs
• Disputes

Key contact

Joanna Conway Partner jconway@deloitte.co.uk +44 (0)20 7303 2633

Protecting your brand assets: trade mark and design portfolio service

Your brand, trade marks and intellectual property are at the core of your business. And at the core of our trade mark practice.

Prevention is always better than cure. Our long experience of working with leading brands, technology companies and ambitious start-ups means we understand the importance of getting things right at the beginning.

As one of a handful of UK legal practices with an international trade mark capability, run by a UK Chartered and European Trade Mark Attorney, we can work with you from initial creation through filing and clearance, protection and enforcement to unlocking and securing value from ongoing management and renewal of your brand assets. If something does go wrong, we’re experts in protecting high profile brands from the sale of lookalikes and verifying the authenticity of branded products for resale.

We’re also keen to help you uncover new ways to maximise the value of your IP. Our brand analysis and audit services will give you a fresh perspective on your IP portfolio, helping you to consolidate and grow brand value plus reduce costs wherever possible.

Key contact

Jade MacIntyre Director jomacintyre@deloitte.co.uk +44 20 7007 5991