CMS

Partner
Co-Head of Intellectual Property

Sarah has built her leading IP practice advising companies on how to protect, monetise and enforce their brands and designs.

Sarah advises clients in the Technology, Media and Communications, Life Sciences & Healthcare, and Fashion and Retail sectors. She handles a broad range of IP work from devising trade mark filing strategies, conducting clearances searches and managing international portfolios, through to advising on all types of contentious matters before UKIPO, EUIPO and UK Courts.

In addition, Sarah has experience of non-contentious matters including drafting and negotiating all types of licensing and franchising arrangements and co-existence agreements. Having spent her formative years at a very large city firm, she is equally adept advising on the IP aspects of corporate acquisitions and disposals. Sarah also routinely advises agencies and brands on advertising issues including pre-clearance advice and assists clients with ASA complaints.

Alongside Sarah’s IP practice Sarah is also the co-founder of CMS equIP, the firm’s tech start-up programme which launched in 2016 and has become of the leading law firm programmes in the tech start-up arena in the UK, and which now has capability in multiple jurisdictions. Working with dynamic start-ups has honed Sarah’s ability to cut through detail and find pragmatic solutions for her clients, whatever their size.

Post-Brexit, Sarah continues to hold representation and audience rights before the EUIPO and the Court of Justice of the European Union. Sarah is English and Irish qualified, and she operates her EU trade mark and design practice from our Polish office.

INTA: Emerging Issues Committee CITMA, Associate Member PTMG, Associate Member

2003 – Diploma in Intellectual Property Law, Bristol 1997 - LLB Law and French Law, Liverpool 1996 - Licence en Droit, Bordeaux