General

Guernsey has an established Intellectual Property Office supported by a raft of expanding IP legislation in areas such as trade marks, copyright, database and performers' rights and patents, which has established the island as a leading offshore jurisdiction for the development and exploitation of Intellectual Property Rights.

There are a number of different vehicles available in Guernsey which are ideally suited to holding such assets. These range from a simple company or trust structure to more sophisticated structures such as:

• the protected cell company which can be used for entities involved in product development, in view of the scope for isolating and managing R&D and product development risk;
       and
• the incorporated cell company, which can take this further by allowing cells to exploit their status as independent legal entities, for example by the cells contracting with each other, which might be useful for the purpose of licensing agreements.

Guernsey's legislators have continued to work on innovative new legislation in the Intellectual Property arena, culminating in the island becoming the first jurisdiction to enact image rights legislation to allow the registration, protection and exploitation of image rights internationally.

Hansard can assist with the set-up and ongoing administration of whichever intellectual property structure is deemed to be the most appropriate for a particular client's circumstances.