Over many years, we have gained extensive experience in the enforcement of the intellectual property rights of our clients. We advise on preventative and proactive steps to enforcement to minimise the need to reply on contentious steps before the courts. Where such contentious steps are necessary, we are able to rely on the expertise of dedicated intellectual property litigators and legal advocates as part of our highly ranked Dispute Resolution practice . Before reaching that point, we rely on a variety of enforcement mechanisms including:
- Domain name complaints and ‘take down notices’.
- Administrative actions before the Departments of Economic Development and Customs authorities in various emirates of the UAE.
- Developing ‘watch’ programs tailored to the intellectual property right portfolio of each client.
Liaising with enforcement and customs authorities, including preparing training packs and information/education material to enable them to identify potentially infringing shipments into the UAE, or where sales or potentially infringing products are taking place in the UAE marketplace.
Collaborating with trade representatives and industry sector bodies to promote awareness of protection strategies for intellectual property rights.
Our approach to enforcement focuses on counselling clients on the most cost-effective and proactive measures to protect their intellectual property rights specific to their needs and, where possible, minimizing the need to move to more complex contentious measures. In this way, the steps taken with our clients to develop, register and maintain their intellectual property rights are in conjunction with parallel steps to effective enforce such rights.
In addition to the benefits that result from such a combined strategy of protection and enforcement, an often overlooked benefit for our clients is the enhanced appeal of their operations to potential investors, or outright purchasers. In such circumstances, the ability to point to a robust strategy for both protection and enforcement of the relevant intellectual property rights can have a direct and positive effect on the value of the investment or purchase price and the ease of the sale or investment. When advising clients on potential acquisitions and investments as part of due diligence projects with our Corporate practice , these are two of the key areas we review from an intellectual property perspective on the due diligence.
Overall, as with all practice areas at Hadef & Partners, we adopt a collaborative approach with our clients and deliver bespoke strategies based on their needs, budgets, and other applicable factors that are specific to each client.