Spruson&Ferguson and Spruson&Ferguson Lawyers are committed to the protection of proprietary information. We are also bound to comply with the National Privacy Principles under the Commonwealth Privacy Act 1988 relating to personal information.

We collect personal information about individuals, such as their names, addresses, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses, where this information is necessary for us to carry out our business activities. Specifically, this means that we gather personal information to enable us to:

• advise our clients in relation to intellectual property matters; 
• file, prosecute and maintain Australian and International patent, design, trade mark and domain name applications and registrations; 
• conduct patent and trade mark opposition proceedings before the Australian Patent and Trade Mark Offices; and 
• conduct intellectual property litigation, licensing, watches and searches.

In addition, our clients' personal information is used to allow us to send to them regular newsletters (and other correspondence) concerning developments in the field of intellectual property. We may use service providers (such as graphic designers, printers and posting services) to assist us with this. Recipients of the newsletter may notify us should they wish to discontinue receipt at any time.

Our clients' personal information is also disclosed to our associated firm located in Singapore, Ella Cheong Spruson & Ferguson ("ECSF"). The purpose of this disclosure is to enable ECSF to contact our clients via regular newsletters (and other correspondence) concerning Asia specific developments in the field of intellectual property. Recipients of the newsletter may notify ECSF should they wish to discontinue recipt at any time. New clients may also notify us should they not wish us to disclose their personal information to ECSF for this purpose.

We collect personal information directly from the individual concerned where ever practicable. Where information is not obtained directly from the individual, we obtain personal information in accordance with law.

We also collect personal information from individual users of our website www.sprusons.com.au. Users may e-mail us or execute a "contact form" to obtain a brochure containing more information about our services. To obtain a brochure, individuals will be required to provide us with their postal address. Our Internet Service Provider also records certain statistical information about users of our website. This information is reviewed by us for statistical purposes and is not disclosed to third parties.

The personal information that we hold is generally kept confidential. However, in servicing our clients, we may be required to disclose personal information to certain third parties which may include:

• governmental offices (such as IP Australia);
• a Court (such as the Federal Court of Australia); 
• other persons (such as agents and associates in foreign countries); and
• our clients (where information has been provided to us by someone other than our client).

Except in relation to our disclosure of personal information to ECSF (as stated above), we do not disclose personal information for the purpose of third party direct marketing.

We only disclose personal information to third parties where we are expressly instructed to do so by our clients in relation to their matters or as may be required by law.

We make every effort to ensure personal information is kept secure and take reasonable steps to protect it from misuse, loss, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. We also take reasonable steps to destroy or permanently de-identify personal information if it is not longer required.

We make every effort to ensure that the personal information we collect, use or disclose is accurate, complete and up-to-date. We will, on request, provide you with details of the personal information we have collected about you. To obtain details of this information, or if you wish us to update your personal information, please contact us by e-mail at mail@sprusons.com.au  or by telephone on +61 2 9207 0777 (Attn: David Griffith, Managing Principal).

Please contact us by e-mail at mail@sprusons.com.au or by telephone on +61 2 9207 0777 should you wish to discuss any aspect of this policy.