The spike in work has been caused by a combination of factors, including an increase in brand piracy, cross-border legislative changes and enhanced concerns over customer data retention. At the London Luxury Law Summit, a panel of leading top brand general counsel chewed over the issues.

Battling pirates

‘Brand protection is the most important issue we face,’ maintains Kevin Mutch, group legal director at Faberge. ‘For our business, the key question is where do we draw the line? Do we acknowledge that others have the right to say they were inspired by Faberge? Some shareholders want us to try to stop every unauthorised use of the name.’

In-house lawyers also have to ensure that their own businesses are not infringing competitors’ copyrights and trademarks, explains Barbara Kolsun, general counsel at shoe designer Stuart Weitzman: ‘All the style names for each of the four seasons have to be searched to ensure that there are no clashes.’ 

Private lives

One area of increasing conflict is data protection and growing privacy laws on the one side, and the need for the luxury market to gather information on its customer base on the other. ‘Dealing with data protection issues, says Ms Kolsun, ‘is a time consuming and big issue for luxury brand in-house legal teams’. 

Isabelle Meyer, Europe regional general counsel for French luxury conglomerate Moet Hennessy, agrees. The growth of e-commerce and social media, she argues, ‘has created much more work for in-house lawyers around privacy issues. We are obliged to train our sales teams in these issues – that is especially important in the luxury sector.’

Ms Kolsun points out that specific local legislation – such as California’s Song-Beverly Credit Card Act – can be particularly taxing. ‘That law means you have to take great care in relation to the holding of customer details,’ she warns. 

Tricky contracts

Personalities in the luxury field can be difficult – as anyone travelling on the same recent easyJet flight with supermodel Kate Moss will be able to attest. ‘Luxury brand marketing contracts can be very complicated,’ points out Ms Kolsun, who recently had to draft a deal involving 25 separate contracts to make a three-minute promotional film. ‘It involved a famous director, several stars and a lot of my time,’ says the lawyer, ‘But the thing is that luxury brands often have very small legal departments. And yet social media has piled on the workload. We have to deal with bloggers – for example, striking deals in which they get $10,000 to say something nice about us.’

Relations with law firms

In-house luxury brand legal teams have to be on top of legislative changes around the world, says Isabelle Meyer -- ‘and in that way you are reliant on working with outside counsel’. In addition to legislative reform updates, Ms Meyer says she uses law firm for litigation and statements to the boards. ‘We’ll do that even in cases where the in-house team is 100 per cent certain of the position,’ she says. ‘The board likes to see a recognisable law firm name on the advice.’

But Kevin Mutch is more circumspect in his use of outside counsel. ‘We ask every time what real value are we are going to get from an outside law firm. Will it take a week to get an answer and will it cost £10,000? If so, we’ll probably take the risk and make the decision ourselves. But sometimes, someone else’s head has to go on the chopping block.’