Gateley at SCS Formulate 2025

Brand names and logos are crucial to a brand’s success in the cosmetics and beauty sector. We have vast experience in helping clients from the beginning of a new brand’s creation all the way through to assisting established brands in the day-to-day policing of their trade mark rights.

We have a wealth of experience in enforcing trade mark rights worldwide and can advise and act on the problems brands in the cosmetics and beauty sector regularly face, such as dealing with counterfeit goods and handling third party infringements. We can assist with protecting your products’ packaging, or the design of a new beauty or cosmetic tool in multiple jurisdictions, as well as protecting the shape, configuration, or ornamental features of your products, to stop your competitors from launching similar products or packaging.

Before investing significant resources or launching a product, it is important to check that there are no third party rights that are valid and enforceable against you. We can help in obtaining ‘freedom to operate’ searches which we can then assess in order to advise you on any risk associated with a particular product or plan of action, and actions open to you in relation to that risk.

We can also assist in securing protection for your new product formulations, methods of manufacture and uses, as well as for any new ingredients, by way of patent protection. Our specialist chemistry team is highly experienced in formulation and process chemistry; we will work with you to prepare and prosecute patent applications that will give you the optimal protection for your products, processes and uses in your key markets and other territories of interest.

Our lawyers are highly experienced at helping brand owners and licensees to navigate the negotiation and conclusion of brand licences, and related agreements including:

• licences
• assignments
• collaboration agreements
• brand partnering, influencer, franchise and sponsorship agreements
• co-existence and settlement agreements
• manufacturing and supply agreements
• celebrity endorsements

We handle IP disputes of all kinds, including in relation to trade marks, patents, copyright, design rights, passing off and unfair competition, confidential information, entitlement and ownership, and domain names. Our offering is unique in the UK, with litigation lawyers working alongside a dedicated team of patent and trade mark attorneys.