Disputes and litigation

We can help you resolve any intellectual property dispute whether in Australia or internationally (with our extensive network of associates). Since 2002, Duncan has worked for clients in multi country IP disputes – developing strategies and managing resolution and litigation in dozens of countries. This was the genesis of one of Duncan’s books, published by Oxford University press, Edited by Duncan and the result of collaboration with a team of lawyers across the world.

Examples of our work in IP Disputes and Litigation include:

• Alternative Dispute Resolution approaches and strategy
• Anti-counterfeiting advice and enforcement
• Appeals from IP Australia, the AAT, State Courts or the Federal Court
• Challenging the validity of patents, trade marks, registered designs
• Copyright disputes
• Designs disputes
• Enforcement or defense of IP Rights before the Courts (infringement or revocation proceedings, usually in the Federal Court)
• Enforcing rights to brands under the Consumer Law and Passing Off
• Negotiating and resolving disputes
• Non-Use Trade Mark proceedings
• Oppositions and Disputes before IP Australia (patents, trade marks, registered designs)
• Patent disputes
• Trade Mark disputes
• Trade Secret and Breach of Confidence enforcement
• Urgent interlocutory injunctions

Insights about disputes and litigation

What the X and Tweet ruling means for brand owners. Does a rebrand abandon your old TM?

A rebrand does not just launch a new name. It starts a clock on the old one. Stop using a trade mark, show no intention of going back to it, and the law can treat it as abandoned. At that point a competitor can pick…

Walking Away From a Brand Doesn’t Always Mean You’ve Let It Go

Intellectual property rights don’t dissolve the moment you stop paying attention to them. That’s the thread running through several developments last week, and it’s worth more attention than most companies give it, because the moment you decide to stop using a mark, retire a product…

Own the Platform, or Pay to Use It

July was a month about ownership. Not compliance, not litigation skill – ownership. Google’s edge sits on TPU technology that competitors must come back and license. Sanofi lost the mRNA product race and is now taxing the winners through delivery patents it happens to hold.…

Can the Registrar Take Back Your Trade Mark? What the Brown Nose Day Appeal Means for Brand Owners

Once your trade mark is registered, how safe is it? For its first twelve months, less safe than most brand owners assume – the Registrar of Trade Marks holds a power under section 84A of the Trade Marks Act 1995 (Cth) to revoke a registration…

When IP Comes to Collect: Why IP Strategy Decides Whether You Pay or Get Paid

What happens when intellectual property built into your products turns out to belong to someone else? This week supplied three expensive answers. Each involved one of the world’s most powerful companies paying – or being ordered to pay – for rights held by a much…

Your patents didn’t lose value. The board where you play them changed.

Over the past two decades, US firm value flipped from mostly tangible to over 90% intangible — and the rulebook for defending those intangibles quietly rewrote itself underneath everyone. A recent Cornerstone Research study, Intellectual Property Litigation: U.S. Trends in Global Perspective (June 2026), maps…