It’s our people that make the difference

Our partners and attorneys are highly qualified and highly experienced to advise you in all areas of Intellectual Property law. We advise start-ups, SMEs, and multinational corporations and ensure that your inventions, brands and designs are expertly protected.

Our specialist teams cover a huge range of industries and technical fields, from automotive and aerospace and electronics and electrical engineering to cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.

Services

At AA Thornton, we provide a comprehensive service offering to help you protect your Intellectual Property and maximise your assets. By combining the expertise of patent and trade mark attorneys, as well as solicitors within a single firm, we can offer you a customised comprehensive service.

International

Our clients range from multinational corporations, to SMEs, to individual inventors, across a broad spectrum of industries. Our client base is centred in the UK but covers many other parts of the globe, notably Europe, North America, India and the Far East. We also work for overseas attorneys and professional advisers, representing their clients’ Intellectual Property interests in the UK, Germany and Europe.

Latest News


IP Litigation Administrator – Temporary Contract London (with flexibility and agile working)

IP Litigation Administrator – Temporary Contract London (with flexibility and agile working)  c£30k (subject to experience)   About Us AA Thornton is a leading Intellectual Property (IP) law firm headquartered in London.   The firm has been established for over one hundred years and enjoys an enviable reputation within the IP profession both domestically and abroad. … Read more »


AA Thornton Shortlisted for MIP Awards

We are thrilled to share that Managing Intellectual Property has shortlisted AA Thornton in two categories at this year’s Managing IP EMEA Awards 2023. Congratulations to our Legal & Litigation team for their nominations. Categories Patent Disputes Trade Mark Disputes The Managing IP annual awards ceremony highlights the achievements made in the IP industry, across… Read more »


Trademarking in the Metaverse: From coined phrase to a descriptive word, a 30-year decline of distinctiveness

The word “Metaverse” has been around for some time. It was coined by Neal Stephenson in the 1992 novel “Snow Crash”, but its wider adoption has been more recent. In 2022, 30 years since the term was first published, “Metaverse” came second-place in the Oxford English Dictionary word of the year. It is fair to… Read more »


Latest Insights


CLE paper for IPO Annual Meeting – The luxury of consistent treatment of computer-implemented inventions

CLE paper for IPO Annual Meeting – The luxury of consistent treatment of computer-implemented inventions


When is a Cat not a Cat? When it’s a Caterpillar. Or a Tigercat. Or is it?

Author: Dan Byrne   Tigercat International Inc. (“Tigercat”) and Caterpillar Inc. (“Caterpillar”) have been in conflict in numerous countries around the world due to conflict arising between Tigercat’s name and Caterpillar Inc’s commonly used abbreviation “Cat”. Most recently, a dispute in the EU IPO has resulted in Tigercat losing an opposition for its application for… Read more »


IP and AI – UK Government publishes response to second consultation

Author: Fergus Brown   On 28 June 2022, the UKIPO published its response (here) addressing the second consultation on the interplay between artificial intelligence and intellectual property, which ran from October 2021 to January 2022. The consultation sought input on three specific areas: Copyright protection for computer-generated works (CGWs) without a human author; Licensing or… Read more »