Lara Elder

Senior Associate

Lara is a Senior Associate in the Trade Mark group and a qualified Trade Mark Attorney Litigator.  Lara handles all aspects of brand protection, enforcement and management. Her practice spans contentious and non-contentious matters, including trade mark clearance, complex oppositions, anti-counterfeiting and enforcement strategies, domain name recovery and disputes. Lara has worked on High Court cases involving a licensing dispute, trade mark infringement and passing off. She also advises in relation to designs, including infringement opinions and invalidity actions.

Lara enjoys working with diverse clients, from start-ups to global brands in the pharmaceutical and medical devices industries, luxury and consumer goods, entertainment and media and automotive. She looks after the UK interests of such household names as John Deere, Botox, Invisalign, Total and Tabasco.

Lara is robust in negotiating commercial settlements and sensitive to the PR issues which can arise, in our age of digital and social media, when enforcing global brands. She is a member of the “Cyberspace” team at MARQUES, where she shares her interest and expertise in online brand protection strategies.

Prior to joining Carpmaels & Ransford in 2011, Lara read modern languages at Oxford University and completed a doctorate on the subject of poetry, politics and identity in the colourful career of the German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, self-brander par excellence. After becoming a European and UK trade mark attorney, Lara qualified as a Trade Mark Attorney Litigator, receiving the Hogarth prize as the highest-ranked trade mark attorney in her year.

Lara speaks fluent German and French.

In her spare time, she enjoys playing the cello, running, cycling and attempting to write more creatively than the law permits.

“Appreciated for her pragmatic approach, Lara Elder dispenses clear recommendations that effectively aid her clients’ decision making in relation to their valuable IP assets.”
WTR 2024

Qualifications

  • MA (University of Oxford)
  • DPhil (University of Oxford)
  • Chartered Trade Mark Attorney
  • European Trade Mark Attorney