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Brian Wimpey joined Norton Rose South Africa in April 2011 to head up the Intellectual

Property Department.  Since completing his BProc and subsequent post-graduate LLB at the University of Witwatersrand in the early 1980s, Brian has run various interesting high court litigation matters, including, inter alia, representing Google Inc. against an organisation which attempted to use its GOOGLY trade mark to lever some advantage over the former.  He was instrumental in obtaining Supreme Court of Appeal approval for the existence of copyright in pharmaceutical package inserts on behalf of GlaxoSmithKline, and represented the same client in an attempt to enforce the shape of a tablet as a trade mark.  He has also represented the Scotch Whisky Association in their endeavours to prevent the manufacture and sale of counterfeit and false Scotch whisky.

His experience comes from a broad range of trade mark and related work, inter alia, trade mark availability searches and trademark filings, litigation in the Supreme Court of Appeal, High Court and before the Registrar of Trade Marks, in respect of unlawful competition, passing off, objections under the Companies Act and the Business Names Act, trademark oppositions and infringements, and to a lesser degree, copyright matters.