Leila Panesar Morris

Leila is a solicitor in the Dispute Resolution team where she works on patent, trade mark, passing off, copyright and design disputes. Leila’s experience encompasses a number of high profile IP cases heard at the UK High Court and Court of Appeal, including the Interflora v Marks & Spencer trade mark litigation regarding Google AdWords.

Leila has experience of several UK High Court patent disputes in areas including pharmaceuticals, medical devices and information technology. She has advised on issues including potential competition law arguments relating to SPCs in the pharmaceutical sector, biosimilars, plausibility, patent licensing in the context of patent pools, freedom-to-operate issues and multi-jurisdictional interim injunction risks.

Leila worked on the landmark Interflora v Marks & Spencer trade mark litigation for three years, which involved a High Court trial, several interim High Court and Court of Appeal hearings relating to survey and fact witness evidence and a substantive appeal to the Court of Appeal. She was part of the Managing IP UK Trade Mark Litigation Team of the Year and The Lawyer’s IP Team of the Year as a result of this work.

Leila has also advised clients on applicable IP law relating to retail products, advertising campaigns, social media, copycat packaging, and copyright ownership in software. She has worked in-house for a public sector client on a multi-million pound technology sector dispute and for a retail client in order to advise on day-to-day IP issues.

Before training as a solicitor, Leila studied Music at the University of Cambridge and also separately attained a Licentiate of the Royal Schools of Music degree in Performance on the piano. Leila then gained a first class law degree at The University of Law in London before training and qualifying as a solicitor specialising in intellectual property disputes at a full-service London law firm. Leila also holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Intellectual Property Law and Practice from the University of Oxford.

In her spare time, Leila enjoys playing tennis, playing the piano and writing music.