Get quick legal clarity on a trade mark opposition issue

This is often the right starting point when you have just received notice of an opposition, you are thinking about opposing someone else's application, or you want a quick legal sense-check before committing to larger work. The consultation is useful where timing, evidence, and strategy are still being worked through and you need to understand the landscape first. It is not the same as a full opposition response service. Instead, it gives you an early-stage discussion about your position and the legal options that may follow.

An adverse report comes from IPONZ during examination of your application. An opposition involves another party challenging the application. That difference matters because the issues, evidence, and strategic considerations can be quite different. This consultation is about opposition scenarios, including whether to challenge, defend, negotiate, or take another approach. If your issue is an examiner's report rather than a dispute with another party, the adverse report advice page is usually the better fit. This page is intentionally about opposition questions, not examination objections.

You get a 30-minute phone or video consultation with an IP lawyer who will consider the information you provide about the opposition issue. The discussion can cover the basis of the challenge, the practical strength of your position, likely pressure points, and what steps are commonly taken next. The fixed-fee is for advice and discussion during that consult. It does not include drafting notices, preparing evidence, filing documents with IPONZ, or acting for you throughout the dispute unless that is arranged separately.

If the matter needs more than a one-off consultation, your lawyer can explain the next stage of work and whether a separate service would be more suitable. That may include preparing a formal response, helping with evidence, or advising on a broader dispute strategy. Opposition matters can expand quickly once documents need to be filed or factual material needs to be assembled, so it is important to distinguish between early advice and ongoing legal work. Ongoing representation is outside this fixed-fee unless we include it in your quote.

The consultation can help you assess the practical pros and cons of different paths, including whether an opposition appears commercially worthwhile, whether a negotiated outcome may be preferable, or whether a defensive response is needed. The answer usually depends on the strength of the marks, the goods or services involved, the evidence available, and your commercial priorities. Rather than giving a generic yes or no, the consult is intended to help you understand the likely pressure points so you can choose the next step with clearer context.

Just submit an enquiry via this page or click the 'get started' button on our website to submit an enquiry. After you've submitted an enquiry, one of our legal consultants will review your enquiry within 1 business day and get in touch to get a better idea of exactly what you are looking for.

Then your legal consultant will send through an email with a bit more information about the services you need, along with a fixed fee quote setting out costs, scope of the service and timing. Have a read through it, and if you're happy with the scope, you can accept and sign our engagement letter online - easy!

Once you've formally accepted, we'll connect you with a specialist lawyer and they will work with you to complete your project. They will contact you by email or phone if they need to get in touch.

Sprintlaw works on fixed-fee pricing wherever possible, so you can review the scope and cost before you decide whether to proceed. For the Trade Mark Opposition Consult service, pricing starts from $200.00.

After you enquire, a legal consultant will confirm what is included, the expected timing and whether any extra work is needed before you engage us.

We operate completely online, which means we can help you wherever you are in New Zealand. We have office spaces in Sydney, and in Melbourne, but our use of technology allows our team members to work remotely from around the world. Our legal team are mostly based in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. We also have a London office for Sprintlaw UK.

Our legal team is made up of experienced lawyers, who are specialists in various areas of law and hold an Australian legal practising certificate. None of our Sprintlaw lawyers are New Zealand qualified lawyers and they do not currently hold a New Zealand practising certificate.

They provide legal services working remotely from Australia via our 'legal consultancy' model, through which (under section 6 and section 35 of the New Zealand Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006) our Australian legal team are permitted to provide legal services to New Zealand businesses provided they do not provide services in certain 'reserved' areas of law. You can read our FAQ page to learn a bit more about our 'legal consultancy' model.

Given the strong similarities between Australian and New Zealand law, and the areas of law in which we practice (being small business and startup law), we do not view the fact that our lawyers have not qualified in New Zealand as having any substantive impact on the quality of our service. We are committed to ensuring that we provide high quality, affordable legal services to all our New Zealand clients.

Our legal team have all trained at leading firms, but have left the traditional corporate law world to join us on our mission to create a new and better way of delivering legal services. They have specialist expertise in technology law, intellectual property law, contract drafting and review, corporate law and commercial law.