Privacy Policy

STOBBS (IP) LIMITED is the data controller responsible for your personal data (collectively referred to as “Stobbs” “we”, “us” or “our” in this Privacy Notice).  

Our full company details are: 

Legal entity name: STOBBS (IP) LIMITED

Company registration: Registered in England and Wales (Company number 08369121)  

Registered office: Building 1000, Cambridge Research Park, Cambridge, CB25 9PD

Email address: info@iamstobbs.com

ICO registration reference: Z3594352  

You can contact us at the above address should you have any questions about this Privacy Notice, or if you would like to exercise any of your rights under Data Protection Laws, which we set out below. 

We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal information about you such as:

• Identity and Contact Information about you including first name, last name, address, telephone number, date of birth, passport/driving licence details, tax status, job title and function, email addresses, and other personal data concerning your preferences relevant to our Services.
   
• Financial and Transaction Information including your bank account and payment card details and other data necessary for processing payments and fraud prevention, including card numbers, security code numbers, and other related billing information.
   
• Business Information including information provided in the course of the contractual or client relationship between you or your organisation and Stobbs, or otherwise voluntarily provided by you or your organisation.
   
• Legal Advice Information including personal information relevant to any dispute, grievance, investigation, arbitration, or other legal advice we have been asked to provide to our client.
   
• Technical and Usage Information including internet protocol (IP) address, your login data to any Stobbs/client portals, platforms or websites, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, device ID and other technology on the devices you use to access our website, platform and information about how you interact with and use our website, products and services.
   
• Marketing and Communications Information including your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences, tracking pixels to determine marketing effectiveness etc.
   
• Sensitive Information including sensitive, special category personal data: information about your racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs, trade union activities, physical or mental health, sexual life and sexual orientation or details of criminal offences, or genetic or biometric data.

We also collect, use and share Aggregated Information such as statistical or demographic data for any purpose. Aggregated Information could be derived from your personal data but is not considered personal data in law as this data will not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. For example, we may aggregate your Technical and Usage Information to calculate the percentage of users accessing a specific website feature. However, if we combine or connect Aggregated Data with your personal data so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as personal data which will be used in accordance with this privacy notice. 

Should you provide information to us about other individuals (e.g. employees, counterparties, advisers, suppliers etc.) you must ensure that they understand how their information will be used, and that you have the necessary consents and authorisations to disclose such to us and for you to allow us, and our service providers, to process it.

How your information is collected:

• When you interact with us: you may share your personal information with us when you provide information using any online form on our website, when you seek legal advice from us or use any of our online client services, or when you correspond with us by email, post, telephone or any other means, including through using our Services, including in conversation with our lawyers, consultants and staff.
   
• Indirect data collection: we may process your personal information when it is provided to us by a third party as part of the provision of our Services and legal advice (e.g. when you are a relevant party to a client who is obtaining legal advice from us in respect of defending a trademark).
   
• Automated Technologies and Cookies: as you interact with our website, we will automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal information by using cookies and other similar technologies. Please see our full Cookie Policy for further details.

How your information is used:

Data Protection Laws require us to have a legal basis for everything that we do with your personal information falling under one of the following categories: 

• Performance of a contract with you: Where we need to perform a contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you.
   
• Legitimate interests: We may use your personal information where it is necessary to conduct our business and pursue our legitimate interests, for example to prevent fraud and/or enable us to give you the best user experience. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you and your rights (both positive and negative) before we process your personal information for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal information for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law).
   
• Legal obligation: We may use your personal information where it is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation that we are subject to. 
   
• Consent: We rely on consent only where we have obtained your active agreement to use your personal information for a specified purpose, in relation to receiving marketing emails from us.
   
• Vital Interests: We may process your personal information where we believe it is necessary to protect your vital interests or the vital interests of a third party, such as situations involving potential threats to the safety of any person. 

We use your personal information in a number of different ways and for different reasons – the tables below set out what we do and why:

Identity and Contact Information 

Financial and Transaction Information

Technical and Usage Information

Marketing and Communications Information 

Business Information 

Legal Advice Information 

Sensitive Information 

All Personal Information 

Where we need to collect personal information due to a legal or regulatory obligation, or for performance of a contract, and you do not provide that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you (for example, to provide you with our Services/legal advice). We will notify you of this at the time.

As a corporate subscriber (i.e. acting in a business capacity and not as a sole trader, partnership etc.), or as an individual subscriber, should you change your mind about receiving marketing communications, you can opt-out at any time by using the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of any marketing communication that we send to you.  You can also contact us at marketing@iamstobbs.com.

Please note that if you opt out of receiving marketing communications, you will still receive service-related communications that are essential for administrative or customer service purposes, for example, updates to our Terms, checking that your contact details are correct etc. 

For more information about the cookies we use and how to change your cookie preferences, please see our Cookie Policy. 

We may share your personal information with third parties - we require all third parties to respect the security of your personal information and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal information for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal information for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions. 

The categories of data recipients we may disclose your personal information to are as follows: 

Other Entities within our Group:

We may share your personal information internally between the Stobbs group, our affiliates and our investors to the extent required for internal administrative purposes, management purposes or other business-related purposes as described in this Privacy Notice.

Service Providers and Processors:

We engage third party service providers, from time to time, including:
 

• Those we use in connection with our provision of Services and legal advice, e.g. barristers, consultants, or experts and other legal specialists such as law firms for obtaining specialist or foreign legal advice, translators, couriers, or other necessary entities;
   
• IT & website hosting, communications and analytics service providers; 
   
• Professional advisors such as tax or legal advisors (for example, as necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims or to protect the rights or safety of the website, platform or us; 
   
• Consultants, insurance companies/claim managers and accountants;
   
• Agents, suppliers or sub-contractors and other associated organisations where they are engaged by us to help deliver a service that we have instructed them on;
   
• Companies providing services for money laundering and terrorist financing checks, credit risk reduction and other fraud and crime prevention purposes and companies providing similar services, including financial institutions, credit reference agencies and regulatory bodies with whom such personal information is shared;
   
• Courts, law enforcement authorities, regulators, government officials or attorneys or other parties where it is reasonably necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of a legal or equitable claim, or for the purposes of a confidential alternative dispute resolution process;
   
• Service providers who we engage within or outside of Stobbs domestically or abroad, e.g. shared service centres, to process personal information for any of the purposes listed above on our behalf and in accordance with our instructions only;
   
• if we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your personal information to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets to whom we assign or novate any of our rights and obligations.

Relevant Parties as part of the provision of the Services:

We disclose personal information as part of the fulfilment of the Services and provision of legal advice, i.e: 

• If your personal information was collected in the course of us providing legal services to any of our clients, we may disclose it to that client, where permitted by applicable law.

Third parties in case of a legal requirement:

We also disclose your personal information if disclosure is required by law or in the context of an investigation, regulatory requirement, judicial proceeding, court order or legal process (including to law enforcement or competent authorities like the police/tax authorities, such as HMRC in the UK). 

Third parties in case of a corporate transaction:

In addition, information about our customers and users, including personal information, may be disclosed as part of any merger, sale, transfer of our assets, investment, acquisition, bankruptcy, or similar event, including while engaging with our actual or potential investors. 

We may provide anonymous information to analytics and search engine providers to help us improve and optimise our Services. We will only share this information in a form that does not directly identify you. 

Whenever we transfer your personal information out of the UK or the EEA to service providers or any other third party, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring that the necessary safeguards are in place, for example:

• We will only transfer your personal information to countries that have been deemed by regulators in the UK or the EU to provide an adequate level of protection for personal information; or
   
• We may use specific standard contractual terms approved for use in the UK and EU which give the transferred personal information the same protection as it has in the UK and EU.

For more information about these safeguards, please contact us at marketing@iamstobbs.com.

We are committed to protecting individuals’ personal information. We put in place appropriate technical and organisational measures to help protect the security of your personal information. However, be aware that no system is ever completely secure. 

We have put various safeguards in place to guard against unauthorised access and unnecessary retention of personal information in our systems. These include pseudonymisation, encryption, access, and retention policies. 

We will only retain your personal information for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements. We may retain your personal information for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you.  For further information about specific retention periods, please contact us at marketing@iamstobbs.com.

You have a number of rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal information.  

You have the right to: 

• Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a "subject access request"). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it. 
   
• Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.
   
• Request erasure of your personal information in certain circumstances. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal information where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal information to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
   
• Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) as the legal basis for that particular use of your data (including carrying out profiling based on our legitimate interests). In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your right to object.
   
• You also have the absolute right to object any time to the processing of your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
   
• Request the transfer of your personal information to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal information in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
   
• Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal information.  However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.
   
• Request restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal information in one of the following scenarios:
   
  • If you want us to establish the data's accuracy;
  • Where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it;
  • Where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or
  • You have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it. 

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us at marketing@iamstobbs.com.

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal information (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we could refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances. 

What we may need from you 

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response. 

Time limit to respond 

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it could take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the relevant data protection regulator.  In the UK this is the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach any regulator, so in the first instance please contact us at compliance@iamstobbs.com.

We may update this Privacy Notice from time to time and we keep it under regular review. This version was last updated on 6^th March 2025. 

Our website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit.