Insights
Reading on the problems people actually bring us.
Written for the person who has just discovered the problem, not for a practitioner. Each one is honest about what is worth doing, and about when the answer is to spend nothing at all.
Showing all 69 guides.
A competitor too close to your brand: reading it before reacting to it
A rival brand lands uncomfortably close to yours: how to tell a genuine problem from an irritation, what the fight is actually worth, why the aggressive first letter backfires, and the evidence that decides it.
Cease and desist letters: written for the file, not for the recipient
Cease and desist letters, sent and received: why the letter is read by people who were never in the argument, how an unjustified threat can create a claim against the sender, and what to do before replying.
Choosing a brand name: what markets well and what registers well
Why the name that markets best is often the name you cannot protect, where the workable middle ground sits, and what to check before packaging is printed.
Counterfeits of your product: the first moves that matter
Counterfeits of your product: why the first move is not a takedown, what evidence has to survive before you act, and how to reach the supply rather than the shopfront.
Design rights: what a trade mark alone will not catch
Protecting the shape, configuration, ornamentation and packaging of a product: registered against unregistered design protection, the disclosure timing that catches people out, and why designs catch copyists a trade mark alone does not.
Expanding the brand: rights do not travel with the business
Trade mark rights are territorial and tied to the goods they were registered for. What to check before entering a market, why squatters file ahead of expanding brands, and how to sequence protection against commercial rollout.
Licensing your brand: what you are really lending is control
Licensing your brand to someone else: why control matters more than the royalty rate, what the definition of net sales quietly decides, what exclusivity blocks later, and what a licence leaves behind when it ends.
Registering a trade mark: the form is not the work
Filling in the form is the easy part. Where trade mark applications actually fail, what a registration does and does not cover, and why a certificate is not the same as protection.
Someone has taken a domain in your name
Domain squatting: how .uk and generic domain disputes differ, why the registrant is hidden from you, what a transfer actually ends, and when a domain is not worth fighting for.
Trade mark oppositions: the argument is narrower than it looks
What a trade mark opposition actually is, the deadlines that decide it, why the cost falls unevenly on the two sides, when coexistence is the better answer, and when to walk away.
Copied content: proving the work was yours
Copied website copy, photography and product listings: why UK copyright has no register, what a provenance record has to show, and why ownership is where most claims quietly fail.
Generated material in your brand, and what you can rely on
Generated material sits in most brands somewhere. What a business could actually rely on if it had to enforce, tested at platform takedown and at chain of title diligence.
Owning your intellectual property: paying for work is not owning it
Paying for work does not always mean owning it. Where ownership gaps hide in contractors, agencies, employees and pre-incorporation founders, why they surface during investment or sale, and what a clean position looks like.
Bootleg merchandise and the rights that actually stop it
Merchandise sits on brand rights rather than on the copyright in the music, and demand for it lasts about as long as a tour does. What both of those facts change about acting.
Clearing a sample: what the permission actually has to cover
Sampling engages both the recording and the underlying song, and each needs its own permission. Why length is no defence, why replays do not solve it, and why the leverage disappears.
Music income that was earned and never reached anybody
Money that never arrives is rarely money somebody took. Income stops where the records describing a work and its recordings stop agreeing, and that changes what the remedy has to be.
Producer agreements and beat licences: what exclusivity buys
A beat bought as exclusive is still bought on somebody else's terms. What exclusivity removes, what a lease permits, and what neither of them settles about the song built on top.
Publishing agreements: what a songwriter gives up and what remains
A publishing deal is read as an income question and decided as a control question. What a publisher does, what is assigned, how long the songs stay, and who says yes.
Reading a recording agreement before it is signed
The money terms are the part everybody reads. What is granted, over which recordings, for how long, and what has to happen for any of it to come back, decides more.
Song splits nobody recorded, and what decides them afterwards
A session where ownership was never discussed produces a track that later needs confirming. What competing recollection cannot settle, what records decide it, and when a split sheet stops being possible.
The band name when a line up ends, and what decides who keeps it
A band name is usually held by everybody and allocated to nobody. What decides who keeps it is what was registered and what was agreed, and rarely who wrote the songs.
A leak before release, and the limits of taking it down
Content circulating before release, or a broadcast redistributed without permission. What the earliest decisions settle, what removal genuinely achieves, and where enforcement stops repaying what it costs.
Clearing third party material, and why the bill arrives at delivery
Footage, stills, music and archive belonging to somebody else. What a clearance has to establish, why nothing in production tests it, and what the parties downstream ordinarily ask to see.
Contributor consent, and what the signature on the day decides
A contributor wants out, or material is being reused in a way nobody contemplated when it was filmed. What a release ordinarily grants, what sits outside it, and what withdrawal can actually undo.
There is no format right, and what protects a format instead
A format, treatment or pitch has turned up elsewhere. Why England and Wales has no format right, what copyright and confidence can actually reach, and what the pitch process does to your position.
Endorsement agreements, and the obligations that outlive them
A sponsorship or endorsement agreement is on the table. Why exclusivity and category definitions decide more than the headline terms, what survives the end of the deal, and where image use continues afterwards.
Representation agreements, and what an athlete is actually granting
An agreement with an agent or manager is being signed, or has broken down. What the appointment covers, how exclusivity works, and why commission on later deals is where these disputes end up.
Unauthorised streams of a live event, and who is entitled to act
An event or a broadcast of it is being redistributed without permission. What rights actually exist, who holds them, and why stopping a stream during the event is a different problem from stopping it afterwards.
Unauthorised use of an athlete's likeness, and what actually reaches it
A brand is using an athlete's name or image without permission. England and Wales has no standalone image right, so protection is assembled from passing off, trade marks, contract and data protection.
After a data breach: the decisions taken before the facts arrive
The consequential decisions after a breach all fall due before anyone knows what happened. Awareness as a legal trigger, the supplier caused incident, and the record that is read afterwards.
Appointing resellers: what the agreement can and cannot control
Some of the control a brand owner reaches for cannot lawfully be imposed, and the rest binds only the signatory. Characterisation by conduct, resale restrictions, exhaustion and liability.
Data protection: the basics every business needs
Data protection treated as a documentation exercise leaves the exposure untouched. Where personal data actually accumulates in a trading business, and what that means for suppliers, marketing and retention.
Getting your terms of service right
Customer terms are usually borrowed early and left in place while the business changes around them. Incorporation, drift, consumer status, and proving which version governed.
Open source in your product: the conditions attached to code you did not write
Every product carries components written by other people on terms somebody accepted quickly. The conditions attach to what leaves the business, and they reach your customer contract.
Sharing your technology under an NDA: what the signature actually secures
A confidentiality agreement secures a claim after the disclosure, not the secret itself. What has to exist at the moment of disclosure for that claim to be worth anything.
The rights in your codebase, and who is actually holding them
You paid for it, so it is yours. That feels obvious and it is frequently wrong. Ownership of software turns on the paperwork, and gaps surface at diligence.
Directors’ duties: who you owe them to, and where personal exposure begins
Directors owe their duties to the company, not to the shareholder who appointed them. Where personal exposure begins, how the duties change as solvency comes into doubt, and why being outvoted is not an answer.
Ending a contract early: how you leave matters more than why
Wanting to leave a contract and being entitled to leave it are different positions. Why the manner of termination decides the exposure more often than the grounds do, how the party who walks away becomes the defendant, and what the relationship is still worth against what exiting it costs.
Joint ventures: how it ends is settled before it starts
Joint ventures fail in a small number of predictable ways: unequal effort, ownership of what the venture creates, deadlock and exit. Why the agreement is opened only once the venture has already stopped, and what that costs both sides.
Money owed by a business customer: whether they can pay decides it
Whether a business debtor can pay matters more than whether they should. Why a judgment against an empty company is an expense, the commercial signals that a customer is failing, and which debts cost more to pursue than to write off.
Preparing to sell: the buyer looks where you stopped looking
Diligence reads the paperwork, not the story. Why the ordinary unresolved items cost more than the dramatic ones, how warranties and indemnities turn an open issue into the seller's money after completion, and why the same repair is cheaper while nobody is watching.
Reading a term sheet: the valuation is the least useful number on the page
The headline valuation tells you least about what you will receive. How preference and control provisions decide the outcome, why non-binding terms harden once agreed in principle, and why leverage tracks how little you need the money.
Restrictive covenants: what actually holds, and what enforcing one costs
Why a restrictive covenant stands or falls on legitimate interest and reasonableness rather than on firm drafting, why the widest clauses fail as a whole, and what enforcing one exposes about your own business.
Signing a significant contract: the clauses that decide it are not the ones you read
The clauses that decide a commercial agreement are rarely the ones that get read: where liability is capped, what the schedules quietly override, and why the leverage to change any of it exists only before signature.
When founders separate: the equity split is rarely the difficult part
When a founder leaves, the argument about percentages is the tractable part. Ownership of what was built, work created before incorporation, the absence of vesting, and the access, knowledge and relationships that no document transfers.
When shareholders fall out: the register does not tell you who controls the company
Why the share register does not tell you who controls a company, what the articles and any shareholders agreement quietly decide, how deadlock and the minority position actually behave, and why the business itself is usually the asset being damaged.
Before the money moves: knowing what your counterparty is actually good for
The gap between a company existing and a company being good for what it promises: what the public record shows and rarely gets read, why a counterparty who resists ordinary verification is telling you something, and where checking for yourself stops.
Freezing assets before judgment: what the court asks of the applicant
Stopping assets moving while a claim runs in England and Wales: what the order does and does not do, the undertakings and the duty of candour it puts on the applicant, and how to weigh whether it is proportionate.
Money laundering duties reach businesses that never considered themselves regulated
Which businesses are actually caught by the money laundering rules, why sitting outside the regulated sector is not the same as being safe, and how a completely honest business acquires a criminal problem.
Money taken by deception: what recovery actually turns on
Money taken by deception: why the bank claim and the legal claim are different exercises, why recovery turns on where the money went rather than on how badly you were deceived, and how to tell early whether a loss is worth pursuing.
Running a cryptoasset business in the United Kingdom: where regulation actually bites
Cryptoasset businesses in the United Kingdom: what registration does and does not cover, why financial promotions catch growth teams first, how a decentralised arrangement is read commercially, and why enforcement follows consumer harm.
Stolen cryptoassets: a visible trail is not a recoverable one
Cryptoassets taken by theft or fraud: why a public ledger does not identify the holder, why intermediaries are the pressure points, how the courts of England and Wales treat these assets, and when nothing proportionate can be done.
Tracing money and assets: the search comes before the claim
Money has left and nobody can say where it sits now: why tracing is an investigation before it is a claim, what moving early actually buys, and how to judge whether recovery is worth its cost.
Applying for a sponsor licence
The Home Office assesses the organisation, not the vacancy. Named personnel, systems that have to be running before submission, and what a refusal costs.
Hiring from overseas: where to begin
The administrative step sits at the front, not the end. Whether to sponsor at all, what it commits the business to, and the order the stages have to happen in.
Keeping your sponsor licence in good standing
The duties run for as long as the licence does, and failures usually begin as ordinary commercial events that reach nobody who owns the licence.
Right to work checks: getting them right
A correctly performed check creates a defence for the employer, and that defence can be absent for somebody who held permission throughout. Where files are already broken.
Setting up in the UK and staffing it from abroad
Incorporation is the question an overseas business can answer immediately, which is why it usually happens first. Clearance, entity, licence and assignments, and why the order matters.
Settlement and the sponsored workforce
What long term settlement of sponsored workers means for an employer, the duties that persist meanwhile, and the retention question that arrives without warning.
The Skilled Worker visa, explained
The route asks first about the job, not the person. Occupation matching, salary as a continuing condition, and where certificates of sponsorship come apart.
When an application is refused: the employer's position
A refusal reopens a role the business had treated as filled. What it costs, what it signals about how cases are being assembled, and the resourcing decision it forces.
A coordinated attack on your reputation: reading it before answering it
An organised attack on a business reputation: telling a campaign apart from fair criticism, why suing is usually the worst option available, the evidence that disappears first, and what platforms will actually act on.
A demand backed by a threat: the first response decides the rest
A demand backed by a threat: why paying rarely ends it, why the first reply matters more than the eventual one, the line between hard bargaining and blackmail, and when the police are the right route.
A judgment is worth only the place where it can be enforced
A claim against a party outside the United Kingdom: why the enforcement route is decided by where the assets sit, why establishing that early is the cheapest useful step, and when a winnable claim is not worth bringing.
Acting against a person you cannot yet name
An account, a seller or a site with no name behind it: why anonymity is rarely absolute, what an identification actually has to survive, why a claim need not wait for a name, and when the answer is not worth buying.
An insider has taken your confidential information: what the first hours decide
An insider has taken or leaked confidential information: why confronting them early loses the case, what proves when it left, why personal data is a separate problem in the same incident, and whether the information is still worth protecting.
Information taken by a leaver: what actually left, and what it is still worth
A leaver or former contractor has taken files, data or a customer list: establishing what actually left, why the value decays, what restrictive covenants really add, and when containment beats pursuit.
Keeping a matter quiet: what actually leaks, and what does not
Keeping a problem out of public view: what actually causes matters to leak, why telling nobody at all backfires, the difference between confidentiality and secrecy, and the situations where staying quiet is not available.
Someone trading as your business: reading the impersonation before answering it
A fake profile, a copycat site taking orders, an invoice carrying someone else's bank details: telling a nuisance from a commercial impersonation, which of your rights reach it, and why denouncing them publicly usually backfires.
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