Someone is selling under our name in another country and our trade mark application was never finished.
Brand and IP are usually the most valuable thing a founder-led business owns and the least well documented. We get ownership straight, get it registered where it matters, and enforce it when someone tests you. The gap is almost always the same. The business knows what it has built. It cannot show, on paper, that it owns it. Those two things are different, and only the second one survives a due diligence exercise, a licensing negotiation or a dispute. It stays quiet for years. It surfaces at the worst possible moment: a buyer’s lawyer asking for the chain of title, a distributor asking for a warranty of ownership, or a competitor filing the mark you have been trading under since 2019.
Dinmore Bell establishes what a business actually owns, puts that ownership in the right entity, and protects it commercially through assignments, licensing and enforcement. Patent and trade mark prosecution is carried out by registered attorneys; Dinmore Bell sets the strategy, instructs them and controls the spend.
How we own it
Ownership first
Assignments from founders, contractors and agencies. A surprising amount of IP is legally owned by a freelancer from 2019. The default rules are not the ones most founders assume. Work created by an employee in the course of employment generally belongs to the employer. Work created by a contractor generally belongs to the contractor unless it has been assigned in writing. The designer who built the brand, the developer who wrote the first version, the agency that shot the photography: each of them owns what they made until a signed assignment says otherwise, and a purchase order is not an assignment. So the first piece of work is an audit rather than a filing. What exists, who made it, under what arrangement, and what evidence there is. That produces a list of gaps, and the gaps are closed in order of how much they would cost to leave: anything a buyer would ask about, anything being licensed to a third party, anything a competitor could use. Chain of title also matters between your own companies. Where the trading company built the brand and a later holding company is treated as owning it, the transfer has to have actually happened rather than been assumed on an organisation chart.
Registration where it counts
A filing strategy driven by where you sell and where you manufacture, not by a portfolio manager’s renewal schedule. Rights are territorial. A UK trade mark registration does not protect you in the UAE, in the EU or in the United States, and the first question is therefore commercial: where do you actually sell, where do you manufacture, and where would an imitator hurt you most. Classes matter as much as countries. A mark registered for the goods you sold three years ago and not for the services you sell now leaves the growth unprotected. So does registering the logo and not the word, which is the commoner of the two mistakes, because it is the word people type and search on. Timing matters too. In most jurisdictions registration is a race, and the cost of filing early is trivial next to the cost of buying back a mark from someone who filed first. Renewals and watch services then run on a register somebody is paid to act on rather than report. Patent and trade mark prosecution itself is carried out by registered attorneys. Dinmore Bell decides the strategy, instructs them, and controls what is spent, so the portfolio reflects the business plan rather than an annuity.
Enforcement
Infringement, passing off, domain and marketplace takedowns, and the commercial settlement that ends it. Enforcement starts with a decision rather than a letter: what outcome is worth having. Stopping the use, being paid for it, or converting the infringer into a licensee are three different objectives and they lead to three different opening moves. The practical routes are often faster than litigation. Marketplace takedown programmes, domain dispute procedures, app store complaints and platform brand registries resolve a large share of copying without a court, provided the underlying rights are registered and the evidence is assembled properly. Where a registration is missing, those routes close, which is the commercial argument for registering in the first place. Where proceedings are the right answer, they are conducted by instructed specialists with rights of audience. The strategy, the correspondence and the settlement negotiation stay with the person who has been running the matter, so the decision to spend is taken with the commercial objective in view.
IP in the contracts you already sign
Most IP is lost in ordinary commercial paper rather than in a dispute. The customer agreement that grants a perpetual licence to bespoke work. The development contract that says nothing about ownership. The distributor agreement that lets the distributor register your mark locally “for your benefit”. The reverse risk is also real: terms that warrant you own everything you supply, given by a business that has not checked whether it does. A warranty of ownership is a promise with a price attached, and it is frequently given on paper nobody reviewed. So the contract templates are part of the IP work. What the business grants, what it retains, what it warrants, and what happens to jointly developed material. Getting that right once, in the templates, is worth more than fixing it repeatedly in negotiation.
Turning ownership into revenue
Ownership that has been established can be sold without selling the business. Licensing a design, a process or a brand into a territory or a sector you do not serve turns a defensive asset into an income line. The structure is straightforward once title is clear: what is licensed, for what field and territory, exclusively or not, for how long, at what royalty, with what quality control and what audit right. Quality control is the clause that protects the brand; the audit right is the clause that makes the royalty real. It also changes the shape of a future sale. A buyer pricing a business with documented, registered, licensed IP is pricing an asset. A buyer pricing the same business with an undocumented chain of title is pricing a risk, and the discount is larger than the cost of having fixed it.
Where specialists come in
Patent and trade mark prosecution is carried out by registered attorneys. We set the strategy, instruct them and control the spend.
Related results
All results →Sectors we run this for
Related insights
All insights →Free zone or mainland: the question founders ask last
The decision is usually made by whoever incorporated first, then lived with for years.
Where nine per cent of your revenue goes
Contract value rarely leaks in a single expensive event. It leaks quietly, through renewal dates nobody owns.
- We paid an agency to design our brand. Do we own it?
- Not automatically. Unless the contract contains a written assignment, copyright in commissioned design work generally stays with the agency, and payment alone does not transfer it. The fix is a confirmatory assignment, which is usually straightforward while the relationship is good.
- Does a trade mark registered in the UK protect us in the UAE?
- No. Trade mark rights are territorial. Protection in the UAE requires a UAE filing, and the same applies to the EU, the United States and elsewhere. The filing programme should follow where you sell and where you manufacture.
- Someone has registered a mark very like ours. What are the options?
- Depending on timing, opposition during the application period, an invalidity or non-use action afterwards, or a negotiated coexistence agreement that draws a boundary by class and territory. Which is realistic depends on your own registrations and evidence of use.
- A contractor wrote part of our software. Is that a problem?
- It is if there is no written assignment, because the contractor will generally own the copyright in what they wrote. It is worth resolving before a funding round or a sale, when the same question is asked by someone with leverage.
- Do you file trade marks and patents yourselves?
- Prosecution is carried out by registered attorneys. Dinmore Bell sets the strategy, decides what is filed and where, instructs the attorney and controls the spend, so the portfolio matches the commercial plan.
- Copies of our product are being sold on a marketplace. Can that be stopped quickly?
- Often yes. Marketplace and platform takedown programmes work in days rather than months, but they generally require a registered right and properly assembled evidence. That is one of the strongest practical arguments for registering before you need it.
- How much of this needs doing before a fundraise or a sale?
- Chain of title above all: assignments from founders, contractors and agencies, and ownership sitting in the entity being bought or invested in. Registrations in your main markets come next. Both are far cheaper before diligence than during it.
- Can we make money from IP we are not using?
- Where title is clear, licensing into a territory or sector you do not serve can turn a dormant asset into revenue. The terms that matter are field and territory, exclusivity, quality control and an audit right over the royalty.