Home -> Practice area -> Media & Communications -> Practices -> Merchandising & Publishing

The practice of the Media & Communications Group derives from long established client contacts with James Bond, Thomas The Tank Engine, The Snowman, The Magic Roundabout, and other valuable children's properties. We advise in association with our Intellectual Property and Trade Marks Groups on the formulation of licence and agency agreements, trade mark programmes, and consumer programmes and promotions. We have advised on online merchandising shoppers' catalogues, and the prevention of piracy and copyright infringement, and the protection of format rights and changed format rights - a notoriously difficult area.

We have contributed to the relevant precedents in Longman's Commercial Precedents, a leading text book in the area. The Group has acted on the interpretation and formulation of publishing agreements for both printed and audio visual material, for both publishing companies and the authors of such materials. We advise on matters arising out of defamation and libel, both for scripts and for longer form content, and the clearance of copyright materials for publication. In association with our foreign offices and correspondent offices, we also advise on tax matters and the favourable tax treatment of royalties within and outside the English jurisdiction. We have also advised on the interpretation of standard form royalty and advance provisions and the accounting difficulties that occasionally arise from such clauses.