Open navigation
Search
Offices – United Kingdom
Explore all Offices
Global Reach

Apart from offering expert legal consultancy for local jurisdictions, CMS partners up with you to effectively navigate the complexities of global business and legal environments.

Explore our reach
Insights – United Kingdom
Explore all insights
Search
Expertise
Insights

CMS lawyers can provide future-facing advice for your business across a variety of specialisms and industries, worldwide.

Explore topics
Offices
Global Reach

Apart from offering expert legal consultancy for local jurisdictions, CMS partners up with you to effectively navigate the complexities of global business and legal environments.

Explore our reach
Insights
About CMS
UK Pay Gap Report 2024

Learn more

Select your region

Sarah Wright
Partner

Sarah Wright

Co-Head of Intellectual Property

Languages
  • English
  • French
  • Spanish
Social media

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 will continue 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 will operate her EU trade mark and design practice from our Polish office.

Awards & Recognitions
01
  • Quote
    "Wright is a versatile practitioner best known for her portfolio management dexterity, which she exercises for industry leaders. Sarah is approachable and very easy to partner with. She is proficient at handling wide-ranging matters for companies of immense global scale."
    World Trademark Review, 2019
  • Quote
    "efficient and practical' in her approach."
    Legal 500, 2019
  • Quote
    "Sarah Wright leads the firm's trade mark practice and advises clients in fashion, life sciences, media and telecoms on prosecution, licensing and litigation. Clients say: "She is really outstanding - she provides tailored advice and commercial proposals."
    Chambers 2017
  • Quote
    "a shrewd filing strategist and international portfolio developer par excellence."
    World Trademark Review 2017

Relevant experience

  • ITV on their global trade mark portfolio including on new filings, oppositions and brand protection issues.
  • Microsoft on their UK and European trade mark filings and oppositions.
  • Fashion clients on various IP matters including their licensing, distribution or franchise arrangements.
  • Lipsy Limited on anti-counterfeiting strategies and dealing with trade mark and design infringement claims.
  • A significant UK media business on the identification, clearance and registration of a new entertainment brand for use across multiple platforms worldwide.
  • A technology start-up on how to protect their IP rights to put them in the best position to secure funding.
  • A UK bank, a life insurance provider and a worldwide pharma company on brand protection issues including clearance of new brand names and advertising issues.
  • A UK manufacturer on a High Court claim for UK and EU registered and unregistered design right infringement.
  • Clients from a wide range of industries on a range of brand protection issues including domain name disputes; takedown notices and the use of keywords.
  • Various clients on the IP aspects of corporate acquisitions and disposals.

Memberships & Roles

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

Lectures list

  • March 2017 - Global IP ConfEx - Panel Speaker on international trade mark law & practice.
  • April 2016 - "Smart Retailers", Draper's Digital Forum, London.
  • October 2015 - “Mind the Gap, Keeping it Legal”, Google Campus, London.
  • September 2015 - "Clutter on the Community Trade Mark Register", The McCarthy Institute Trade Mark Symposium at University of San Francisco.
  • June 2015 - Panel Speaker at Thomson Reuters Trade Mark Conference, London.

Education

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