In order for us to be able to represent you, we need to be able to contact you throughout the application process.
As we do not cold-call potential clients, in almost all cases, the initial enquiry will be initiated by the potential client. By contacting us, we are entitled to assume that you are happy for us to capture certain basic personal data, such as your name, e-mail address and phone number – so that we can keep in touch with you.
If you no longer wish to work with us, or if you decide not to proceed with a particular matter, please use this form so that we can remove your personal data from our systems.
However, if you do decide to work with us, you must accept that we will need to retain your personal data so that we can correspond with you about a particular matter. This may include preliminary correspondence (e.g. to provide pre-filing advice and costings); correspondence during a particular matter (e.g. prosecution correspondence); as well as ongoing correspondence (e.g. notifications about renewals, etc.).
In terms of the GDPR, the legal basis for us processing your personal data is to enable us to represent you – without us retaining and using your personal data, we are unable to do this. The purpose for which your personal data may be used is to correspond with you regarding a matter in respect of which you have asked us to act for you – we will not use your personal data for any other purpose.
We will treat and safeguard your personal data as confidential, in-line with our privacy policy, which can be viewed here.
You may also need to submit personal personal data for us to process in your capacity as an applicant or an inventor. Clients, applicants and inventors are different “classes” of data subject, for which different rules apply. So:
- if you are a private individual client, you may need to complete the client, applicant and inventor submission forms; whereas
- if you are a company client, you may need to complete the client and applicant submission forms, but ask an employee or other person to complete the inventor submission forms.
We will advise you as to which people need to submit which data, as appropriate.
In the course of acting for you, it may be necessary for us to identify and disclose personal data relating to an applicant to a patent office, our associates, and/or to our overseas associates (when filing overseas) – otherwise the application cannot proceed.
We will only share your personal data on a need-to-know basis, that is, with a patent office at which a patent application for your invention is filed; or to our foreign associates (overseas patent lawyers) who will do the same on our behalf at their local patent office. After 25 May 2018, any foreign associate that we use will need to agree to certain data protection terms with us, which are a precondition of them working for us. Those terms can be seen here.
The GDPR restricts our ability to transfer your personal data to entities outside the EU (EU entitles will already be bound by the same GDPR as us, so it is assumed that intra-EU data transfers are low-risk), unless any of the following conditions are met, that is to say, unless the transfer is:
- made with your informed consent (this page explains what you need to know, and enables you to make an informed decision, and provide consent, based on that information);
- necessary for the performance of a contract between the individual and the organisation or for pre-contractual steps taken at the individual’s request (this would be the case where you are also the applicant or client);
- necessary for the performance of a contract made in the interests of the individual between the controller and another person (this would be the case where we are acting on behalf of a client other than you, such as your employer);
- necessary for important reasons of public interest (not generally relevant to patent matters);
- necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims (this is the case for the successful prosecution, maintenance and enforcement of patents);
- necessary to protect the vital interests of the data subject or other persons, where the data subject is physically or legally incapable of giving consent (not generally relevant to patent matters); or
- made from a register which under UK or EU law is intended to provide information to the public, and which is open to consultation by either the public in general or those able to show a legitimate interest in inspecting the register (which is the case where entries are made in the public patent registers, which contain applicant and inventor data).
Given that one of more of exceptions 2, 3, 5 or 7 almost always bite, there is no need for us to obtain your informed consent (exception 1), but for the avoidance of any misunderstandings, we do ask for you to consent to us transferring your data outside the EU at the bottom of this page.
What personal date do we need?
In order to be able to work with you, we will need to process the following personal data:
- Full name of a key contact to whom correspondence should be addressed
- Valid postal address
- Telephone number and/or an e-mail address
- Nationality*
- Residence*
* This is needed because we will need to carry out anti-money-laundering checks and to meet the “know your customer” requirements.
This data will only disclosed to third parties if we need to engage the services of a third-party supplier who requires it (such as an overseas attorney, if you decide to file overseas); or unless identical data is also provided by you in your capacity as an applicant or inventor.
We will only use this data to contact you o to correspond with our associates (e.g. overseas lawyers, translators, etc.) in relation to matters in respect of which you have instructed us to act, or are considering instructing us to act.
We will not use your personal data for any other purpose, unless you have completed another data submission form on this web site or consented to us doing so.
Having read and understood the above, please complete the form below and click submit.