We are delighted to announce that we have published the remaining 2016 rankings of the top firms for copyright work in over 20 jurisdictions. These comprise Australia, Canada, China, France, India, Mexico, South Africa, United Kingdom and United States.


If your firm has been ranked in IP Stars, congratulations! Listing on IP Stars means that your competitors and/or clients have recognised your firm as one of the most capable, active firms in IP in your jurisdiction.

Please use the navigation bar to view all the 2016 country rankings in each region. The US national rankings can be found under "Americas".

Rankings explained

These are the final firm rankings for this year. All the rankings you see on this website will remain unchanged, save for any later changes to firm names, until we publish new rankings in 2017.

Firms are ranked in “Tiers”, or as "Highly Recommended" or "Recommended" for each practice area. Tiers 1 and 2 are our top-tier rankings. The total number of firms listed, as well as the number of tiers, varies by jurisdiction.

Patent and trade marks

For the prosecution ranking we consider all work before the IP Office, both pre-and post-grant. The contentious ranking considers dispute resolution (especially litigation) and all other IP-related legal work.

Copyright

For the copyright ranking we consider both non-contentious (such as licensing) and dispute resolution work. The top-tier firms are firms we reasonably believe have specialists who can advise rights holders on the cutting edge issues in copyright.

Another important attribute of these firms is that they represent clients in a broad range of copyright-based industries – from publishing and entertainment to technology. 

Research methodology

The IP Stars rankings are based on extensive research carried out over a six-month period, starting from October each year. To produce the rankings, our team of researchers in London, New York and Hong Kong obtains information from thousands of firms and their clients by phone, online surveys, email and in face-to-face meetings. Researchers also conduct desk research for other available information.  The attributes assessed include the firm’s workload and its sophistication, quality of work and strength of the team.

The research is conducted rigorously and impartially. There is NO COST to participate. Firms cannot vote or pay for their own inclusion, nor can they solicit votes from associates. To be included at all, a firm must have received a significant number of recommendations from peers and clients.

All the 2016 rankings are based on information available when the research was concluded. Please see more information below.

What's next

2016 Firm Analysis & Stars
The firm analysis and individual IP stars list still on this website are from the 2015 edition of the IP Stars handbooks. The 2016 version will be published in May for trade mark and copyright and June for patent. 


All the firm rankings, latest analyses, and list of the IP stars (private practice and in-house practitioners) for 2016 will also be published in the Global and US editions of the IP Stars handbook (2016).

For advertising opportunities in the handbooks please click here for the contact details of the sales and advertising team.

Learn more about IP Stars

More information, including links to our methodology page, research timelines and FAQs, can be found here. To know why it is important to participate in our research each year see our blog post here.

The research for 2017 rankings starts again later this year! For the latest news and developments follow @IP_STARS and @ManagingIP.