Litigation

Acacia Law has an excellent track record in litigation matters relating to intellectual property law and commercial matters.

Feel free to contact our litigation team if :

  1. You receive a letter of demand indicating that you are infringing someone else’s intellectual property. This is happening more frequently these days, see for example, our blog post Getting Harrassed by Getty’s Copyright Infringement Demands?
  2. You believe someone is infringing your intellectual property
  3. You want to challenge the validity of someone’s intellectual property
  4. Someone is challenging the validity of your intellectual property.

We can handle intellectual property disputes and litigation in both Australia and New Zealand.

Disputes

What Should I do If Someone Uses My Intellectual Property Without My Permission?

  • Before objecting to unauthorised use – get proper legal advice from an intellectual property expert to ensure that the unauthorised use is legally objectionable.
  • Be sensible!  Not every unauthorised use is bad news – sometimes it might amount to good publicity! For example, an artist who complained that their painting was shown on set of a TV show without his permission, could have used it as an opportunity to raise his profile, but instead, because of his objection, the TV show just stopped showing his painting.
  • Rather than thinking of suing an infringer, it might be best to consider reasonable royalty payments. Also, sometimes an infringer did not mean to infringe and will stop if asked to.
  • Be careful of communicating directly with the infringer without expert legal advice. You could inadvertently make comments or admissions that can be held against you if the matter later goes to court.

What Should I do If I Receive A Letter Of Demand Stating That I am Infringing Someone’s Intellectual Property?

  • Contact a Patent Attorney. This could be a very serious situation and could lead to litigation. Your patent attorney will be able to advise you further. Each infringement case is different and you will need to obtain specific advice.
  • Do not ignore the letter. This could lead to people filing an infringement claim against you in court. It is always more expensive to resolve things through the courts than by negotiation.