In business for 100 years - Adams and Adams celebrates a centenary of practice

South Africa’s leading intellectual property law firm, Adams and Adams, celebrates 100 years of legal practice this year.

Chairman Alan Smith says “We have grown from a small practice in Bureau Lane, Pretoria, in 1908 to the largest South African intellectual property law practice, supported by a strong commercial, civil litigation and property law expertise. We are certainly one of the best-known intellectual property law firms in the world.”

“We represent local and international clients in more than 50 African countries and in virtually every country abroad. In South Africa, we operate offices in Pretoria, Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban.”

Smith ascribes the success in representing international clients in countries other than South Africa to the firm’s expertise and to the fact that it is more cost-effective to use a South African firm.

“Although IP law differs from country to country, we make sure that we have information readily available and continuously update our database with the latest international information.”

The firm depends on its people. Today, it has a professional staff complement of 49 partners, 14 senior associates, 18 professional assistants, two full-time consultants, 33 candidate attorneys and 32 paralegals. The total staff compliment is over 400.

Adams and Adams prides itself on its BEE and female appointments. Smith says that “At least 50 percent of our employees are from previously disadvantaged groups and a large portion is female. As our work is highly specialised, a small percentage of the legal profession enters this niche market.  We therefore invest heavily in training people and our BEE component reflects this.”

“This is no mean feat. It is not merely a matter of appointing and training someone with a law degree.  For our patent practice, we have to find engineers or scientists who are prepared to change direction. We have to train them in a totally new profession, whilst still taking advantage of their background expertise,” says Smith.

In addition, the firm has to cope with continuously changing technology in addition to changes in the laws. This means keeping its people up to date in areas as diverse as biotechnology and the Internet, with the related investment. A recent development is the new domain name dispute resolution procedures.

In spite of these challenges, he is positive about the future of IP in South Africa.

“South Africa has excellent laws to protect IP. However, there is a real need for businesses to get a better understanding of the rights that are available to them in order to protect their trade, including registered protection for trade marks, patents, copyright and designs. Too many businesses go to great expense to develop their products and trade and then find that they are undermined by others who simply copy them without the development costs” says Smith.

Although counterfeiting and piracy have increased, the provisions for enforcement and prosecution have greatly increased, although probably not by the same margin”.

For businesses who go to great expense to establish their own brands, there are also industry related bodies, such as the Advertising Standards Authority, to protect their advertising concepts.

Adams and Adams will be involved in various projects in 2008 to celebrate its centenary.  These include increasing IP awareness through sponsoring the IP programme on Summit TV, various social investment projects and hosting a function at the South African Embassy in Berlin during the International Trademark Association’s annual meeting, when 8 000 trade mark experts meet in May.  The centenary celebrations will culminate with a function at the Cradle of Humankind at Maropeng on 08/08/08.

Adams and Adams – historical background

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.