Privacy Policy

Allen IP Limited (‘we’, ‘us’, or ‘our Company’) is an Intellectual Property services provider based at our registered office address of 3 Windsor Terrace, Hagley Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham B16 8UH, U.K. Matthew Allen, the Managing Director of Allen IP Limited is a UK and European Patent Attorney regulated by The Intellectual Property Regulation Board (IPReg), whose registered office is Salisbury Square House, 8 Salisbury Square, London EC4Y 8AP and website is www.ipreg.org.uk.

We are a Data Controller registered with the relevant supervisory authority in the UK, The Information Commissioners Office, under reference number ZA418963.

We are committed to protecting your privacy, and this Privacy Policy details how Allen IP Limited uses and protects the information you give to us (‘your information' or 'your data’), and the terms under which the website www.allenip.com is made available to you.  Please read this Privacy Policy in full. By accessing any page of our website www.allenip.com you agree to be bound by the conditions of our Privacy Policy.

1.  RELEVANT LEGISLATION

Our Company operations are designed to comply with the following national and international legislation with regards to data protection and user privacy:

• The UK Data Protection Act 1984, 1998, 2018 (‘DPA’),
• The EU General Data Protection Regulation 2018 (‘GDPR’), and the
• The EU Data Protection Directive 1995 (‘DPD’).

Hence, we may sometimes ask for proof of identity before we disclose personal information to you.

2.  OUR CORE DATA PRIVACY PRINCIPALS

We use your information only in accordance with this Privacy Policy, effective from 25th May 2018. We may update this Privacy Policy occasionally in line with legislation or industry developments. We may not explicitly inform our clients or website users of changes. Instead, we recommend that you check the Privacy Policy on this webpage, or request the latest Privacy Policy in writing from us.

In general, we use your information to match your preferences with relevant services.

Your information will not be sold, or provided for monetary gain, to any third party under any circumstances, or made public, except in the specific circumstances set out in this Privacy Policy.

3. WHY WE COLLECT YOUR DATA

We collect and process your data primarily to provide legal services and advice in the field of Intellectual Property. Your data assists us in processing your applications for patents, trademark registrations, and design registrations. We also collect and process your data to enable us to reply to enquiries through this website.

We are a Data Controller for people making enquiries about our services and for our direct clients. We process data of clients of overseas attorney clients. We also process personal data on behalf of our employee’s, both current and past, as well as processing personal data for people applying for jobs, including speculatively, with us. We also process personal data of our suppliers.

If we are instructed to transfer personal data to a country located outside of the European Economic Area (EEA), we will only send such data if the recipient is in a country that has been deemed by the European Commission to have an adequate level of data protection, or if other suitable assurances and/or safeguards are in place. If the recipient is in the USA, data will be sent provided the recipient is signed up to the EU-US Privacy Shield. If the recipient is not in a country subject to a positive finding of adequacy by the European Commission, nor signed up to the EU-US Privacy Shield (https://www.privacyshield.gov/welcome), then a risk assessment will be conducted to establish if the recipient will provide an adequate level of protection for the owner of the data. 

We have systems that protect us and our clients against fraud and other crime. We may use your personal information to prevent crime and to trace suspects. We may check your details with fraud prevention agencies. If you give us false or misleading information and we suspect fraud, we will record this. We and other organisations may use and search these records to help us to trace debtors, recover debt, prevent fraud and to manage your accounts, or check your identity to prevent money laundering, unless you provide us with other satisfactory proof of identity.

4. WHAT INFORMATION IS BEING COLLECTED?

The information we hold depends on the relationship you have with us, but typically includes:

Contact details including but not limited to your title, full names, office and residential addresses, telephone and fax numbers, email and website addresses;

Other personal data including but not limited to your date of birth, gender, nationality, and occupation.

A cookie is a piece of information that is stored on your computer's hard drive by your web browser. On revisiting our website www.allenip.com our computer server will recognise the cookie, giving us information about your last visit. Usage of a cookie is in no way linked to any personally identifiable information while on our website. Once you close the browser, the cookie simply terminates. Most browsers accept cookies automatically, but usually you can alter the settings of your browser to prevent automatic acceptance. If you choose not to receive cookies, you may still use most of the features of our website. We may collect (through cookies) non-personally identifiable information when you visit our website, such as the type of device you are using, the domain name of the internet service provider, and browser type. We may use technology to look at which pages of the website our visitors view, their IP addresses, and if links to other websites are used. We may use this information to understand behaviour of users on our website, but this technology does not identify you personally. Information may be provided to third parties in the form of aggregated statistics, but such statistics do not include information that can personally identify you.

Our website www.allenip.com uses Google Analytics (GA) to track user interaction. GA use cookies on our website to collect data in order to help us improve our service provision. Google is based in the USA and is EU-U.S Privacy Shield compliant. If, however, you do not want GA to track any part of your visit to this website you can prevent site tracking by disabling cookies on your internet browser.

If you submit a CV to us we will use the information it contains for the application process. We process your data as a legitimate business interest in line with our Recruitment Policy.  We need to use your personal data so as to be able to contact you.

Information you choose to submit to us via email or the internet may be intercepted and collected in transit by others. We do not accept responsibility for the loss of such information.

Our website may contain links to third parties websites. This Privacy Policy does not apply to third parties websites. We do not accept responsibility for third parties privacy policies, and advise you to review them before visiting their websites.

5. HOW WE COLLECT AND STORE YOUR INFORMATION

Paper records are kept in filing cabinets in our security alarmed offices, or in security alarmed archive storage facilities.

Personal information that we store for correspondence and case management purposes is held on password protected computers in our security alarmed offices.

Personal details are also stored by Microsoft in their Office 365 Outlook email cloud servers. Microsoft is based in the USA and is EU-U.S Privacy Shield compliant.

Your information will not be disclosed to any third party (for example patent, trademark and design offices, overseas attorneys, translators, investigators and draftsmen) for any purpose unless upon your instructions we deem it necessary.

We only collect personal information from those who purchase services from us, or from those who communicate with us, including but not limited to Clients, Suppliers, Website Visitors, Job Applicants and Employees, Complainants, or Third parties contacting us with respect to any of the aforementioned.

We will collect data directly from you when you contact us, by any means, in connection with legal enquiries or as part of our provision of legal services, for example, but not limited to, when you use this website.

You should avoid entering personally identifiable information on any part of our website, where due to the nature of that part of the website, your information will then be made public.

If you are under 16 years of age you must obtain parental consent before posting a comment on our website.

6. HOW WE USE YOUR INFORMATION

In processing your personal data we rely on the lawful basis of legitimate interests. Dependent on the relationship you have with us, we use and process your data for the following purposes:

To provide our legal services to you. To take precaution against legal liability. To protect the security of our database. In issuing invoices, and collecting payments. We have a legal obligation to provide your data to patent, trademark and design authorities in order to process applications upon your behalf. We share your information with third parties who provide legal or administrative services on our behalf, for example with overseas attorneys so that you can obtain Intellectual Property rights in other countries. We also have a legal obligation to process data for legal compliance purposes, for example to ensure that no conflict of interest arises. Also, we use your data to maintain a relationship with you and keep you informed of law updates.

We may also share personal data when it is lawfully demanded by authorities such as the government, regulatory bodies, auditors or police.

7. HOW WE PROTECT YOUR INFORMATION

Our website is hosted within a secure data centre located in the UK. Our website host maintains appropriate technical and organisational security measures to protect your personal information against loss or misuse.

8. HOW LONG WE WILL KEEP YOUR INFORMATION

Your information is kept in accordance with regulatory obligations and good practice. The time depends on the nature of the information. We try not to keep your information for any longer than is necessary.

Information relating to an individual who is or has been a client of us or who has been provided with any form of legal advice by us may be kept and processed indefinitely for historical purposes. Such data may be stored indefinitely on secure servers, compact data disc or a similar storage media.

Information relating to actual or potential employees or past employees (including work experience candidates) will be kept and processed for a minimum of six years.

9. DISCLOSING YOUR DATA TO THIRD PARTIES

We will only make personal data available to third parties:

• If you have given your express consent; or
• If it is necessary to fulfil our obligations to you; or
• If it is necessary to comply with an order from a regulatory or statutory body which is empowered to require us to release your data.

10. MARKETING EMAILS AND NEWSLETTERS

If you choose to subscribe to our email newsletter, the email address that you submit to us will be forwarded to MailChimp (https://mailchimp.com) who provide us with email marketing services. We consider MailChimp to be a third-party data processor to process personal data on our behalf. MailChimp comply with the legislation set out at section 1, and are based in the USA and are EU-U.S Privacy Shield compliant. Any email address that you submit to MailChimp will not be stored within our website’s own database or in any of our internal computer systems. Your email address will remain within MailChimp’s database for as long as we continue to use MailChimp’s services for email marketing or until you specifically request removal from the list. You can do this by using the unsubscribe link contained in any email newsletter that we send you, or by emailing us. When requesting removal via email, please send your email to us using the email account that is subscribed to the mailing list.

If you are under 16 years of age you must obtain parental consent before joining our email newsletter.

While your email address remains within the MailChimp database, you may receive promotional emails from us occasionally (typically up to three times a year). If you receive a promotional email directly from us, you will be provided with an automated way to unsubscribe. Alternatively you can email enquiries@allenip.com.

11. DATA BREACHES

We will report any unlawful data breach of personal data held by us or our third-party data processors to all relevant persons and authorities within three working days of the breach if it is apparent that personal data stored in an identifiable manner has been stolen.

12. CUSTOMER FEEDBACK AND YOUR RIGHTS

We welcome your questions and comments about privacy issues and the design of our website. Should you have such comments or have a complaint about how we are using your personal data, please send an e-mail to enquiries@allenip.com.

Your rights include: the right to have your data erased (in certain circumstances), the right to have your data rectified, the right to access your data, to the portability of your data i.e. so that your data can be transmitted to another data controller, to withdraw consent to processing your data, to object to processing your data, and to lodge a complaint with The Information Commissioner’s Office.

A request to find out what data we hold about you, or to have your data erased, can be sent to:

The Data Controller, Allen IP Limited, 3 Windsor Terrace, Hagley Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham B16 8UH, U.K.

Alternatively you can email: enquiries@allenip.com

Allen IP Limited will respond to any such request within four weeks of receipt.

© April 2019 Allen IP Limited