Thera Adam van Straaten

Senior Office Partner

Co-Head Global Intell Property

Languages

Dutch and English

Practice areas

• Commercial agreements
• Commercial and IT
• Consumer
• Intellectual property

Practice notes

Thera is Global Co-Head of our Intellectual Property group and specialises in IP and marketing, with a focus on litigation. Thera advises clients on trademark, design, copyright, tradename and domain name infringements as well as on advertising and marketing claims in relation to food health claims, novel foods, pharma and medical devices.

Thera’s recent experience includes:

• Multi-jurisdiction assistance for the online sale of a new tap water product for a company without retail experience, and for which the online process needed to be legally sound (terms and conditions, privacy statement, etc.)
• Appeal proceedings for a private individual who owns the Benelux trademark WENDY’S and is being under attack since 1995 by the US company Wendy’s International, the third largest burger fast food chain in the US;
• Misleading comparative advertising litigation in relation to an OralB toothbrush advertising on billboards and tvc’s in the Netherlands;
• High profile successful 5 year litigation up until the Dutch Supreme Court over the infringement on an unregistered EU design right on a bicycle basket by a main competitor;

She regularly publishes articles, most recently winning the prestigious BMM Wim Mak Award in 2017 for the article ‘Co-existence agreements for trademarks: an everyday occurrence’ and an English publication in March 2018 in the German GRUR magazine on the issue of passing off in the Netherlands

Thera was on the board of BMM (the Benelux association for trademark lawyers, attorneys and in house counsels with 600+ members) and presiding for two years, and is founding member and treasurer of the VIEPA, the Dutch association for Intellectual Property litigators.