Bio
Michelle has broad experience in intellectual property from commercial advice and protection to dispute resolution.
Michelle has been practicing in intellectual property law for more than 20 years.
She has extensive experience assisting clients to protect and enforce their brands from businesses at start-up stage through to large multi-nationals. This includes trade mark registration, clearance searches and advice, filing, prosecution, portfolio management and trade mark disputes such as oppositions and litigation. Michelle practices in relation to advertising and marketing law issues, copyright, designs, confidential information, consumer law and new product launches. Her clients cover a broad range of industries, among them, arts & entertainment, food & beverage, fashion, esports, publishing, advertising, design, health and various consumer goods and services.
Before joining Simpsons she practiced at a number of law firms, including spending 13 years at a multinational top tier firm.
Representative Work
Brand protection for some of the world's most well-known brands, including acting and advising in all areas in relation to: trade mark registration and portfolio management; trade mark oppositions, disputes and litigation. Recent work in this area has included trade mark clearance searches and applications; advising on protection of non-conventional trade marks such as shape, colour and other elements of branding; non-use actions; trade mark oppositions across multiple countries; product launch; significant disputes on or in the lead-up to new product launch.
Consumer law, including: advising and acting in relation to misleading and deceptive conduct disputes, particularly in relation to product branding, advertising and marketing.
Various intellectual property and misleading conduct/passing off disputes.
Acting in design disputes and advising on design copyright overlap issues for unregistered designs. Advising and acting in relation to copyright and moral rights matters.
Intellectual property related commercial agreements, including: agreements transferring intellectual property rights; intellectual property licence agreements; sponsorship agreements; advertising and marketing agreements. Acting in preparation of confidentiality agreements, intellectual property ownership agreements in connection with employment arrangements and consultancy/contractor arrangements.
General commercial, in particular: providing specialist intellectual property expertise in connection with all forms of agreements and due diligences, drafting various agreements including licensing agreements, consultancy agreements and supplier agreements, among others.
Domain name disputes.
