Shariqa Mestroni is Senior Counsel at Bird & Bird Australia.
As an intellectual property lawyer, Shariqa enjoys working with clients to build and protect their brands, manage their IP portfolios and enforce their copyright, trade marks and patents. She has experience advising clients across the lifespan of their intellectual property. From advising clients on branding strategy and building their trade mark portfolio to guiding them through the registration process, she has a deep understanding of how best to enforce those rights in a dispute. She has recently been involved in Federal Court proceedings enforcing our clients’ copyright and has successfully defended claims of trade mark infringement. Shariqa has also been involved in complex litigation involving trade mark infringement, rectification of the register, patent infringement, passing off, contract claims and misleading or deceptive conduct under the Australian Consumer Law.
Shariqah has worked with a number of the firm’s key clients in the life sciences, media and entertainment, retail and consumer and technology and communications sectors. This experience has allowed her to make numerous contacts in those industries and work collaboratively with lawyers in other practice areas across the firm. She is agile and can develop a good understanding of complex matters quickly. She is motivated to think creatively and deliver the best commercial solutions to clients.
In the last year, she has also worked on franchising matters, regulatory matters involving the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods and PBS, trade mark prosecutions and oppositions and negotiated co-existence arrangements. Shariqa is the Australian editor of Bird & Bird’s BrandWrites blog. She is also part of Bird & Bird’s pro bono committee and a solicitor volunteer for the Arts Law Centre of Australia. She was proud that her efforts in pro bono work in the intellectual property space were recognised when she was a finalist for the 30 under 30 awards in 2018. Before joining Bird & Bird, she worked at boutique IP, arts and entertainment firm and at a leading Australian independent law firm.
Shariqa is also a speaker at Beyond Activ APAC in Sydney, Australia.
