Charlotte Fleetwood-Smith

Charlotte is a senior associate in Russell McVeagh's Litigation team with an extensive background in consumer law, privacy and intellectual property matters.
 
She is a commercial litigator and disputes advisor who has built up significant expertise in the fair trading arena including all kinds of Fair Trading Act instructions, regulatory investigations and the execution of remediation programmes for clients who have experienced issues with meeting their obligations to consumers.
 
Charlotte also handles disputes based and commercially focused privacy and intellectual property matters. Advising on privacy compliance, complaints and breaches, as well as complex data use cases, make up a regular feature of her privacy practice. She also frequently works with clients on intellectual property infringement, passing off, brand strategy and commercialisation of intellectual property.     

Charlotte's recent experience includes:

• Advising on regulator engagements and requests involving fair trading and misleading conduct/representations issues.

• Fair Trading Act, Advertising Standards Authority and marketing law instructions.

• Privacy matters including complaints to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, data breaches, implementation of new customer insights technologies within businesses and the use of personal information and data. 

• A wide range of contentious and non-contentious intellectual property matters including trade mark and copyright infringement, passing off and reputational issues, Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand (IPONZ) oppositions, revocations and invalidity proceedings and developing and securing valuable intellectual property portfolios.

LLB/BA, University of Auckland.

Prior to joining Russell McVeagh in 2019, Charlotte spent time in the litigation team at one of New Zealand's leading intellectual property specialist firms.  
 
She is a member of the Intellectual Property Society of Australia and New Zealand and Auckland Women Lawyers' Association.