Toby is an intellectual property advisor and litigator with over 20 years of experience and is featured in Best Lawyers™ for intellectual property law. He routinely works on matters involving copyrights, database rights, design rights, trade marks, passing off, and confidential information, as well as related contractual issues.

While he handles disputes in these areas, he commonly works with clients on infringement risk analysis, risk mitigation, litigation avoidance and early dispute resolution. Examples of reported cases he has worked on include:

• BHB Ltd v William Hill Organisation Ltd, the seminal decision of the EU Court of Justice on database rights.
• Bouverie No. 1 Ltd v De Vere Hotels & Leisure Ltd, a High Court trial involving a rebranding dispute.
• NLA Ltd & Ors v Meltwater Holding BV, multiple Copyright Tribunal and High Court proceedings (including trial) relating to the use of online newspaper material by a media monitoring service.
• PRCA Ltd v NLA Ltd, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court appeals on the applicability of the ‘temporary copy’ copyright exception to web browsing.
• Cutbot Ltd v NLA Ltd, a Copyright Tribunal trial concerning the reasonableness of terms of a licensing scheme.
• Neptune (Europe) Ltd v deVOL Kitchens Ltd, a High Court trial concerning unregistered design right infringement in kitchen furniture.
• Natural Instinct Ltd v Natures Menu Ltd, an IPEC trade mark infringement trial.

Toby frequently supports clients in responding to government consultations to influence law and policy. He also has extensive experience of advising clients on artificial intelligence and intellectual property law (eg, concerning the use of training data, opt-out modalities, and the legal status of machine-generated outputs) and is a regular author and speaker in this field.

Toby has spent time working in-house, including as the acting global head of litigation for a major television network, giving him invaluable experience of the operational and financial constraints clients are often working within.

Toby is a member of the following:

• IP Consulting Editorial Board, Lexis PSL
• Data and Copyright Committee, IP Federation
• AIPPI; BLACA; SCL; CLA