Crefovi

Firm overview:

From its offices in London and Paris, Crefovi acts as a bridge for clients between the UK and France and beyond. With its sights on the creative industries, the firm advises across sectors including luxury and fashion; film, music and entertainment; art; and sports and esports. The trademark team has extensive experience prosecuting trademark applications for a large number of national and international clients, and maintains and polices portfolios throughout the world.

Crefovi represents clients in a wide variety of matters before the courts, regulatory agencies and review boards, involving claims of false advertising, deceptive packaging and similar issues. The team frequently faces off against the heavyweight UK trademark firms on high value, business-critical matters. Founding partner Annabelle Gauberti believes the firm's strength is its knowledge of UK, French and EU law, especially in adapting to changes in EU law post-Brexit.

Team overview:

Annabelle Gauberti is the founding and managing partner of the 13-year-old law firm. Gauberti is French and spends most of her time in London, and has particular experience in fashion law. Gauberti is a thought leader on all issues pertaining to law and the creative industries, and produces a podcast—Lawfully Creative—which includes discussions with artists, policymakers and professionals as well as the firm’s live webinars on legal issues.

Key matters:

Contentious:

• Pre-litigation case in the music industry

Crefovi is involved in a pre-litigation case relating to the enforcement of IP rights, particularly trademarks, as well as know-how and trade secrets, in the music industry.

• Take-down notices issued to commercial users of social media platforms

This is a matter of compliance with terms and conditions from social media platforms which provide that user-generated content, especially from commercial users of the social media platforms, must comply with registered trademarks, trade secrets law and copyright law.

Crefovi’s client has instructed the firm to send takedown notices, and letters before court action, to commercial users that infringe its protected IP rights and trade secrets. The team is currently negotiating settlement agreements, after the takedown notices have been complied with.

• Dispute with Google over app takedown

Crefovi is advising a client through an ongoing dispute with Google and Google Apps, in relation to the proprietary app of the client, which holds several registered trademarks and which was unlawfully pulled down from Google Apps and sites in breach of Google’s terms for app developers. There are also several breaches of trademarks and other intellectual property rights of the client, in relation to this ongoing dispute.