Past Events

An influencer is someone who has the power or allure to effect the purchasing decisions of consumers, usually because of their authority or knowledge in the area, or their relationship with their audience. They are also a significant marketing device, used by brand owners in many varied ways to target specific audiences.

The speakers in LES B&I’s Young Members hosted webinar will cover the ‘must haves’ underpinning influencer agreements, and share some practical tips and interesting tales, illustrating how brand owners can ensure that they have sufficient control to maintain (and even grow) the integrity and reputation associated with their brands – even when in someone else’s hands.

Speakers:

Abigail Wise – Abigail advises on all aspects of trade mark and design law, and has substantial experience with large portfolio management, strategy, prosecution, and post-registration actions. She advises on both contentious and non-contentious matters across a wide range of industries, and has experience of licensing arrangements involving the media.

Greg Ruback – Greg specialises in the film and television sector, and spent ten years working in-house for two major Hollywood studios in London and Los Angeles. His experience covers acquiring and developing IP, licensing and marketing. Greg’s work also includes providing commercial advice to media companies and their co-promotion partners, including working with social media influencers.

This event is free to LES members / £15 for non-members.

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Co-branding occurs where two companies strategically align themselves for the purpose of marketing, in the hope that the success and allure associated with one side is brought to its partner brand too. It is often seen as an effective way to open businesses up to another audience, boost exposure and build their customer base. Usually, both companies need to find some value in the deal, and it must be a partnership (though not necessarily equal) to make it work.

Join us for a special webinar discussing the latest trends in co-branding (the benefits and the potential pitfalls) and the intellectual property implications.

The speakers are as follows:

• Alan Harper – Director of Intellectual Property, Walker Morris LLP
• Esther Jolley – Intangible Asset Director, Stobbs
• Abigail Wise – Senior Associate (Trade Mark Attorney), Bristows LLP

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Join LES B&I and Steven Webb for a webinar on “Fun and Games – inside a video games developer” on 28th January!

Steven is the General Counsel and Company Secretary of Sumo Group plc, one of the UK’s largest providers of end-to-end creative development and co-development services to the video games industry. 

Video game sales are reported to be greater than the film and music industries combined, reached $159 billion in 2020 (up over 9% from 2019) and are forecast to be over $200 billion by 2023. Some of the largest companies in the world top the video game sales charts – Tencent, Sony, Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon – and Sumo counts them all as clients.

Only launched in 2003, Sumo has grown rapidly and was listed on the AIM market in December 2017 (when Steven joined the business).  In the following three years, the business has nearly trebled in terms of number of people and expanded geographically within and outside the UK.  Starting life as a “work for hire” developer providing extra capacity for other developers and game publishers for certain sections of a game’s development, success led to being given entire responsibility for full projects.  More recently, Sumo has created its own games – notably Spyder and Little Orpheus, both published on Apple Arcade.

As a young and fast-growing sector, there have been significant industry shifts – from console to mobile; premium to free to play and now subscription models from the likes of Google and Apple.

Sumo’s evolving business model, in a dynamic industry and based on creative works gives rise to a number of different intellectual property considerations that Steven will describe in this session.

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