Ben Whitchurch

Spoor & Fisher handles the filing, registration, prosecution and enforcement of trade marks, patents, designs and copyright. We have two main associate offices – Spoor & Fisher South Africa and Spoor & Fisher Jersey – with 58 lawyers and over 250 staff across our offices in South Africa (Pretoria, Cape Town and Johannesburg) and 7 directors and 90 staff in our Channel Islands (Jersey) office. Clients choose us to draft agreements for their commercial intellectual property transactions and to negotiate the best terms. Our intricate knowledge of over 80 different intellectual property laws and practices across our core geographical regions - Africa and the Caribbean - means that we create and implement robust intellectual property protection strategies. Consistency in quality and record-keeping comes with having Spoor & Fisher as a single point of contact to manage entire intellectual property portfolios. We work directly with corporates - global companies to small businesses - their main legal advisors as well as inventors. Clients from across the globe, including Africa-based businesses, have asked us to help protect and enforce their intellectual property assets in their chosen markets. Over the years, we have opened local offices across Africa, including Gambia, Ghana, Malawi, Zambia, OAPI (via Cameroon) and ARIPO (via Malawi). We have a direct filing presence in Sierra Leone and Zanzibar. Where we do not have offices and where we cannot file directly, we work with carefully selected local associates.