Alex Newman leads the firm’s intellectual property practice in the North of England. His practice is focused on all aspects of the enforcement/protection and exploitation of intellectual property rights, but with particular emphasis on dispute resolution. His clients include large publicly listed multinationals, but also start-ups and smaller family businesses.

Alex is equally comfortable and adept when advising in relation to soft IP (trade marks, copyrights, and designs) and hard IP (patents). He regularly advises clients in respect of the creation, ownership, and licensing of all types of intellectual property rights across a wide range of industries, and acts for Claimants and Defendants alike in infringement, subsistence and validity disputes. He also advises regularly in relation to contractual disputes which have intellectual property rights as their subject-matter. Whilst he has extensive High Court and Court of Appeal experience in relation to both soft and hard IP disputes, it is equally common that the advice he provides is strategic and pre-emptive of litigation.

Alex’s approach to advising his clients looks very much to the future as well as the present. He helps his clients to pro-actively identify and address the issues they are likely to face in the future as well as the issues they are facing now, whether in the context of devising and implementing a complex licensing or anti-piracy program, or strategising for the later stages of a dispute during its early stages.

Representative Experience

• Advising a multi-national mapping company on the licensing of its worldwide mapping and dynamic content data;
• Advising a leading navigation solutions company on a series of trade mark and copyright infringement claims and counterfeiting/piracy prosecutions resulting in convictions and custodial sentences;
• Advising a multi-national global supplier of surveillance and monitoring equipment to government security agencies in relation to a patent infringement and validity dispute relating to covert surveillance and device interception technology;
• Advising a UK accessories designer and wholesaler in its dispute with the Michael Jackson estate regarding the validity and scope of its licence to sell Michael Jackson-themed costumes;
• Advising a circa 100 franchise UK engineering franchisor in relation to a dispute relating to the development and support of the IT solution used by its franchisee network in the context of corporate deadlock within the solution licensor;
• Advising a UK supplier to the healthcare industry in relation to the ownership and implied rights of exploitation of a bespoke multi-million pound software application, and associated implied obligations to deliver up source code;
• Advising a large US supplier of drilling components to the global oil and gas industry in relation to the sale of counterfeit components bearing its brands, resulting in conviction and a significant custodial sentence;
• Advising a university professor in relation to disciplinary proceedings brought by the Health Professions Council in relation to allegations of plagiarism of a student’s dissertation.