Iona Silverman

Partner, Freeths

Iona specialises in drafting complex trademark and patent licences, advising on the IP aspects of acquisitions and disposals as well as drafting collaboration, joint-development and other agreements. She also has a solid grounding in contentious IP, having taken a ground breaking copyright case from the Copyright Tribunal, through the High Court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court, culminating in a decision from the Court of Justice of the European Union in 2013 (Public Relations Consultants Association Ltd v Newspaper Licensing Agency Ltd and Others Case C-360/13). Iona works with clients in the consumer goods, healthcare, automotive and media industries, and in 2016 spent nearly a year on secondment at a major FMCG client assisting them integrate three large newly acquired brands into the business.

Contributed to

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Protection of geographical indications—UK

Practice notes

This Practice Note sets out a summary of the protection that can be obtained for geographical indications (GIs) and designations of origin, including appellations of origin, protected designations of origin (PDOs) and protected GIs (PGIs) in the UK (including the differences between the regimes for Great Britain and Northern Ireland). It considers how appellations of origin, PDOs and PGIs interact with trade mark law. It sets out details of the international framework for protection pursuant to the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property and the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (the TRIPS Agreement) alongside relevant protections under UK law, including the UK GI scheme—put in place once the EU regime was no longer applicable in Great Britain—as well as the limited protection available under the Trade Marks Act 1994.