Our Patent Services

As a firm of European Patent Attorneys and Chartered Patent Attorneys, we are experienced at dealing with all aspects of patenting inventions. We have the technical background to rapidly understand complex technologies, the legal background to provide expert advice and the commercial understanding to make our advice relevant. Our services include:

• Invention harvesting, i.e. reviewing a client’s technology to identify patentable inventions, obtaining prior art searches if needed, and providing advice on a patent filing strategy.
• Drafting, filing and prosecuting patent applications through to grant in the UK, Europe and internationally. We have established relationships with patent attorneys throughout the world and through which we can coordinate international patent filing programs. Importantly, as these relationships are not fixed, we are able to choose the attorneys we use dependent on each client's requirements.
• Strategic management and planning of patent portfolios, including payment of renewal fees.
• Conducting Oppositions and Appeals at the European Patent Office, either in defence of a client’s European patent against an attack by a competitor or in a proactive attack on behalf of a client against a competitor’s European patent.
• Conducting oral proceedings before the examination, opposition and appeal boards at the European Patent Office: our advocacy skills and experience include the carrying out of oral proceedings at the European Patent Office. Success at oral proceedings may be required to secure the grant of a European patent at the culmination of the examination procedure and is almost always required to secure a win of an opposition or an appeal.
• Conducting disputes before the UK Intellectual Property Office (e.g. entitlement, validity disputes) and attending hearings at the UK Intellectual Property Office.
• Providing freedom-to-operate and validity opinions, including obtaining the relevant patent searches. A freedom-to-operate opinion will provide an assessment of the risks involved in launching a new product. A validity opinion will provide an assessment of the likelihood of being able to knock out any competitor’s patents that might stand in the way.
• Competitor monitoring: we can “watch” the progress of a competitor’s existing patent applications and we can carry out regular searches for the publication of a competitor’s new patent applications, thus keeping abreast of their patenting activity.
• Carrying out due diligence exercises on patent portfolios and related intellectual property assets: these are often required by potential investors seeking an assessment of whether or not the intellectual property portfolio of interest is in good order.