History
It all started with the Adams family. Reverend Henry Adams, father of the Adams brothers Harry and EV, who would eventually establish the law firm Adams and Adams, came to the Transvaal in 1875 for the Church of England on what was then seen as a remote piece of African soil.
Reverend Adams resigned from the church in 1890 and settled in Pretoria to do secretarial work. He died in 1893, leaving his wife Jemima Amelia to provide for her five children by running a boarding house.
The spirit that would prevail in the law firm Adams and Adams was evident in Mrs Adams. Youngest son EV would later write in the history of the firm: “My mother conducted a boarding house so well that she was able to take us five children to England for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee and placed Harry and Melville at school there and sent my sisters to a finishing school in Brussels.”
Eldest son Harry returned to Pretoria in 1905. After deciding that there was no future in the Transvaal for a civil engineer, his career of choice, he decided to become an attorney. He married Mary Crawford, daughter of the honourable Hugh Crawford, Speaker of the Transvaal Parliament.
Within a few days of his admission as an attorney in 1908, Harry opened his own office in Bureau Lane. At that stage, each province of the then Union of South Africa had its own patent, trade mark and copyright laws. This meant that companies had to apply for their patents and trademarks separately in the Cape, Natal, Transvaal and Orange Free State.
In 1916, the South African Government passed the Act on Patents, Designs, Trademarks and Copyright, unifying all the previous provincial Acts and making it possible to file applications for national patent, trade mark and design registrations in Pretoria.
Since that time, Adams and Adams has grown to become one of the best-known intellectual property law firms worldwide. It has gained unique and wide experience in providing international and local clients with services and advice in the field of intellectual property law internationally
The firm has been widely recognised for its professional excellence. Top national and international ratings include those by the Euromoney Publication Group, Professional Management Review and SA’s Top 300 National Companies.
Firmly rooted on African soil, Adams and Adams is looking forward to serving local and international clients with legal expertise they deserve, and of which the firm can be proud, for at least another hundred years.