Oliver Smith > Keystone Law > London, England > Lawyer Profile

Oliver Smith

020 7152 6550 oliver.smith@keystonelaw.co.uk

Work Department

Brand management.

Position

Oliver has over 20 years’ experience settling disputes involving a wide range of commercial and intellectual property matters. He specialises in company and financial services disputes as well as trademark, copyright and libel claims. Oliver acts for both UK and international companies and has particular experience advising Russian entities. Oliver’s areas of expertise are intellectual property disputes (trademarks, passing off, copyright, design rights, patents); company, director and shareholder disputes; contract, fraud and breach of fiduciary duty claims; hostile takeovers and proxy battles for listed companies; financial services disputes (insider dealing, market abuse, mis-selling); professional negligence (solicitors, accountants and investment advisers); Competition Act and Enterprise Act claims and representations to OFT; defamation (libel, slander and malicious falsehood), privacy and data protection; injunctions (including freezing of assets and search and seizure of evidence); ‘Norwich Pharmacal’ disclosure orders against ISPs to identify anonymous online publishers. Oliver’s key achievements include: (i) acting for active investor in shareholder proxy battle over a listed dot com company; (ii) advising leading stockbroker in £300m certificate of deposit fraud; (iii) defending director and fiduciary duties claim by a £500m investment fund; (iv) bringing libel claim for leading FTSE 250 inter-dealer broker against a solicitors’ firm; (v) successfully defending Private Eye magazine in the longest running UK libel claim; (vi) obtaining a ‘super-injunction’ to protect the privacy of a successful sportsman; (vii) successfully defending a trade mark claim by one of the world’s largest retailers and obtaining record costs award in the Trade Marks Registry; (viii) winning a landmark reported copyright case for joint authorship of the song ‘Young at Heart’ by The Bluebells used in a VW TV advertisement.

Career

Trained Wright Webb Syrett, qualified 1973. Davenport Lyons, 1993-2000; Rosenblatt, 200-08; Michael Simkins, 2009-11; Keystone Law, 2011.