HGF Leeds is our firm’s head office, located in the heart of the city. We are passionate about the continued development of ideas and technology in Yorkshire and the North-East. Our teams’ collective experience and expertise allows us to provide our clients with a winning combination of technical and commercially sound advice.
We are a full-service IP office, which enables us to provide our clients with a rapid response to their queries. We aim to add value to the service that we provide to our clients through understanding their business and working with them to maximise the potential of their IP and minimise risk.
We have strong relationships within the local business community and are active members of Connect Yorkshire and the North East Process Industry Cluster (NEPIC).
Specialist Sectors
As our flagship office HGF Leeds offers trade mark and law specialists in all sectors of the business, including experts in engineering, electronics, chemistry, life sciences, bio sciences, pharmaceuticals and software.
Looking for a specific skillset, speciality or individual?
Use our ‘People Finder’ to discover the wealth of talent and skills that make up the teams at HGF. Select a speciality or search for a team member by name, and use their ‘Contact Card’ to get in touch.
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Dr Jonathan Atkinson Partner
Jonathan’s practice involves providing commercially focused advice to business managers and to R&D groups on all aspects of patent strategy and portfolio management. This includes obtaining and defending patent rights, providing opinions on freedom to operate where third party intellectual property rights exist, challenging third party patent rights and conducting due diligence to support corporate acquisition and licensing deals.
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Andy Camenisch Partner
Andy’s specialism lies in the fields of pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and chemistry and since joining the profession he has been fortunate in being exposed to a diverse range of work.
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Alastair Da Costa Partner
Alastair joined HGF as non-executive board adviser in January 2019. He brings his extensive international board and executive level leadership experience in growing legal and professional services practices to the board of HGF. Alastair is also an experienced corporate and commercial lawyer and he has served as a director for a number of organisations.
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Martyn Fish Partner
Martyn advises clients on all aspects of contentious and non-contentious intellectual property law with a focus on intellectual property litigation.
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Robert Harrison IT Director and Partner
Robert Harrison initially joined HGF in 1995, during the summer break, whilst studying for his degree in Computer Science at Leeds University. As well as being responsible for the day today running of the IT infrastructure, he developed a bespoke case management system for use by the attorneys to help manage an ever increasing caseload.
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Jason Lumber Chairman
Jason’s practice includes worldwide trade mark and brand clearance searching and advice, brand protection and registration, anti-counterfeiting advice and support, UK enforcement and litigation support, IP acquisition, disposal, exploitation and licensing, together with brand protection strategy advice.
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David Potter Partner
David advises his clients on the protection and management of their trade mark portfolios, encompassing all aspects of trade mark protection from clearance searches, prosecution and registering of trade marks, to advising on infringement enforcement issues.
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Paul Sanderson Chief Executive and Partner
Paul has been the Chief Executive of HGF and HGF Law since 2004. He is a Solicitor of the Senior Courts of England & Wales having specialised in intellectual property law since 1991. He advises clients (in particular US, European, Indian and Asian clients) on the strategic aspects of intellectual property ownership in the UK with a particular focus on complex national and multinational patent and trade mark litigation, and the protection of trade secrets, designs and copyright.
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Chris Vaughan Partner
Much of Chris’s practice involves working closely with SMEs - many often born out of promising academic research by major UK universities - and helping them to develop effective intellectual property strategies and secure multi-million pound venture capital investments. He also works with in-house patent attorneys and senior executives at major multinationals, and has expertise in worldwide patent prosecution.
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Carol Watkiss HR Director and Partner
Carol joined HGF in 2008 as Head of HR for the HGF group. Her role is to work closely with the partners, reporting to the CEO, to further improve people management strategies and implement pragmatic HR practices which support the firm’s growth plans. Developing HGF to become an employer of choice is a key foundation of HGF’s HR strategy.
