Nicola is an associate in the intellectual property and commercial team within Withers Tech, with a particular interest in fashion, fashion tech and luxury brands.
Nicola has experience across the team's practice, and she regularly advises on protection and commercialisation of IP rights, including registration, maintenance and enforcement of trade marks, negotiating and drafting IP licences, B2B and B2C terms of service, SAAS agreements, master services and framework agreements, sponsorship and brand ambassador agreements, confidentiality agreements, and other commercial contracts for clients in a broad range of industries.She also advises on data protection and contentious matters, including IP infringement, passing off claims, and domain and company name disputes for high-profile luxury fashion houses and sports teams, among other sectors.
She assists with IP and data privacy aspects of M&A transactions and investment rounds (equity and debt), particularly venture fundraising for Series Seed onwards (company and investor side) for tech companies in retail, finance, hotels & hospitality, insurance, healthcare, fashion, life sciences, and the metaverse (including NFTs).
Nicola joined Withers as a trainee in 2017 completed seats in Commercial Real Estate, Corporate, and Litigation and Arbitration.
ME IN A MINUTE
Many lawyers say they always wanted to be a lawyer, but that isn’t the case for me. I grew up loving science and, before training to be a solicitor, I studied Biomedical Science at university. I enjoyed the problem-solving, analysis and critical thinking that came with it. It was only after a dispute with a landlord at university that I considered a career in law (20-year-old me priding myself on my amateur legal letters). My favourite part about my job is getting to use the skills I learned from my studies whilst working with a great team of colleagues on exciting projects with a variety of clients, primarily in the tech space, across the world in a broad range of industries.
I have a particular interest in fashion and fashion tech. Fashion is an industry that centres on creativity and expression of personality, style and mood – it's exciting and artistic and, to some extent, touches each and every one of us, but it is also one of the most damaging industries in the world. It is rife with environmental damage, human rights abuses and fractured supply chains. My love of science and technology coupled with my interest in fashion lead me to fashion tech. I'm passionate about advising and guiding innovative, disruptive founders as they transform the industry and shape the future of fashion.
Outside of work, my life – quite rightly – revolves around my Italian Greyhound, Sir Alessandro.