Practice · 08
Intellectual property and brand
A brand is only yours if the paperwork says so. Most of it does not.
Trade marks, copyright, licensing, and the terms that decide who owns what a business creates.
The work
For most businesses, intellectual property is not patents. It is the name on the door, the logo, the website, the content, the software a contractor wrote, and the customer list. All of it can be owned by the wrong person without anyone noticing, until the business is sold, or someone else starts using the name.
The practice clears and registers trade marks, sorts out ownership with assignments from founders and contractors, drafts licences and confidentiality terms, and deals with the letter that arrives when someone else thinks you are infringing, or the one you send when they are. It also builds the IP clauses into the contracts the business already uses, which is where the real protection sits.
Trade mark applications and assignments are fixed-fee work. Government filing fees are quoted separately and passed through at cost.
This work includes
- Trade mark searches and applications
- Responding to IP Australia and oppositions
- Brand and name clearance
- Copyright and who owns the work
- IP assignments from contractors and founders
- Licensing and royalty agreements
- Confidentiality and trade secrets
- Software, content and design terms
- Domain names and social handles
- Infringement letters, sent and received
How it usually runs
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Find out what you actually own
Many businesses discover, on the day they try to sell or license something, that the logo belongs to the designer, the code to the developer, and the brand name to someone who registered it first. A short audit answers that before it costs anything.
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Register what can be registered
Trade marks in the right classes, with a search first so the application is not a surprise. Copyright needs no registration in Australia, but it does need the right assignments in place.
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Write the terms that carry the value
Licences, assignments, confidentiality terms, and the IP clauses inside your customer, contractor and employment agreements. This is where most of the protection actually lives.
Where the line is
- Patents and designs need a registered patent attorney for the application itself. The practice advises on ownership, licensing and the commercial terms around them, and refers the filing.
- An infringement dispute that goes to court moves to a litigator on the panel. Letters, negotiation and settlement stay here.
Nobody pays anybody for a referral here, in either direction. How the practice hands work on →
Common questions
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I paid a designer for my logo. Do I own it?
Not automatically. Under Australian copyright law the person who creates a work owns it, and an independent contractor keeps that ownership unless they sign it over in writing. Paying the invoice is not enough. The fix is a short assignment, ideally signed before the work starts and easily obtained afterwards if the relationship is still good.
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Is registering a business name the same as a trade mark?
No, and this is one of the most common misunderstandings in small business. A business name registration lets you trade under the name. It gives you no right to stop anyone else using it. A registered trade mark does. If the brand matters, register the mark, and search first, because a name that is free on the business register may already be someone's trade mark.
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Someone is using a name like mine. What can I do?
It depends on whether you have a registered mark, how long each of you has been trading, and how close the names and the goods really are. Sometimes the answer is a letter that ends it in a week. Sometimes it is that they were there first. The practice will tell you which before anything is sent.
Often sits beside this
Make an enquiry
Send a short note about what is happening. You will hear back within one business day, and there is no charge for finding out whether the matter is a fit.