For entrepreneurs and businesses, no legal issue exists in a vacuum. Every area of law is linked, and each influences the risks and opportunities that you face.
When you work with our lawyers, you get legal advice that looks at the big picture and a strategic plan to achieve your goals.
That’s the kind of relationship we built with Giles Long after he came to us for intellectual property advice. When he had the chance to take his idea to the next level, we were ready to help him realise his ambitions.
Here's Giles’ story about working with our business legal services teams, in his own words.
“Georgie and her team helped me to protect my brand internationally and grow my business.
As a Paralympian, I knew only too well how confusing the classification of para sports was for TV viewers.
I knew that they felt some athletes had an advantage over their competitors, and that the public didn’t understand why they’d been grouped together. People were watching events in their own homes thinking things like: “why is the swimmer with one arm racing against the swimmer with one leg?” Something had to change if para sports were to grow amongst the general public.
In 2000, I won the gold medal in the S8 100 Butterfly in world record time at the Sydney games. It was the highlight of a sporting career in which I won seven Paralympic medals.
Within ten years, I’d been awarded an MBE, retired from the sport, and began changing people’s perception of para sports through LEXI – my ground-breaking system to explain the classification system for TV audiences. The system had its major breakthrough at the London 2012, when it was used by Channel 4 and Australia’s ABC.
LEXI uses a human stick-man shape and an intuitive traffic-light colour scheme to illustrate the location of different impairments and how they affect movement, coordination, vision and comprehension. This makes it easier for viewers to understand – at a glance – why competitors are grouped together.
For me, the beauty of LEXI was in its innovation and I recognised this needed protection. I turned to the expert legal team at Irwin Mitchell for help to protect the intellectual property in LEXI.
I worked with Georgie Collins to ring fence LEXI as a brand and explore the whole spectrum of IP rights that would protect my idea.
Some organisations are happy to talk up diversity and promote opportunities for disabled people without really having disabled people’s best interests at heart. Georgie helped me shield LEXI from this sort of cynical exploitation and choose partners I was comfortable working with.
As the brand grew, and more international broadcasters become interested, I called on the experience of Irwin Mitchell’s cross-border team to manage my risks, so I could focus on the product.
The outcome has been fantastic. I own every bit of content featuring LEXI unless it has a foreign voice or is overlaid over actual footage – wherever in the world it’s used.
With Irwin Mitchell’s support I’ve developed LEXI and diversified the brand to offer three distinct products: 3D videos that explain each classification, graphics that can be placed over live sport pictures or footage, and individual icons that can be used when an athlete is competing.
LEXI is now used by broadcasters in over 140 countries around the world.
I know that my product helps people understand the classifications of para sports, meaning that they can just get on with enjoying the sport. I’m very proud of the brand I’ve created, and I wouldn’t have seen it grow like it has without the help of Irwin Mitchell.
Irwin Mitchell helped me to protect what matters most.”
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