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One of the benefits of having a Community Trade Mark is that if someone infringes your mark you can get an injunction across the whole EEA in a single action – usually in your home court. This means that even a small company has the opportunity to protect its brand internationally at reasonable cost. The process however is not used very frequently by British companies and many lawyers may back off in the face of potentially complex jurisdictional issues where the infringement appears to be being carried out by several different members of a corporate group. .

Bonaccord has been working with Iain Mitchell QC to obtain the first such order granted by a Scottish court. Not all law firms have our expertise in intellectual property law so we often act as specialist advisors to firms that do not have this knowledge inhouse. In this case we were delighted to be able to help out explaining to the client, a small electronics company, how they could in a single action block sales across Europe by a large multinational who was using a logo virtually identical to one that they had registered and in relation to which they had made considerable investment. We were lucky to secure the services of Mr Mitchell who was able to bring all the disparate threads into a coherent whole and present a compelling if complicated case to the court resulting in a very successful outcome. Like ourselves Mr Mitchell works on both sides of the border and we cannot recommend him strongly enough both for his legal skills and commercial understanding.

If you are wondering how you could best protect your brands please do get in touch with us at enquiries@bonaccord.eu.