Davenport Lyons
| Headquarters | London |
|---|---|
| No. of offices | 1 |
| No. of attorneys | 16 associates, 41 partners (in early 2008) |
| Major practice areas | Corporate, Dispute resolution, Property |
| Date founded | 2001 incorporated; |
| Company type | partnership |
| Website | http://www.davenportlyons.com |
Davenport Lyons was a London-based law firm that entered into administration on 25 April 2014. Although most of their work concerned corporate acquisitions, in 2007 their actions against file sharers became news in the United Kingdom. This subject became widely publicised in late 2008 because of the number of innocent people receiving letters from the company, it was reported on Watchdog that Atari stopped using this company for this reason.
They were incorporated in 2001 and in 2008 listed 16 associates and 41 partners. Prior to their entry into file-sharing related intellectual property litigation, they were best known for their involvement in the case of a London tailor near Savile Row.
Robin Shaw was named Lawyer of the Week by The Times in September for having acted for HarperCollins in the case brought by the BBC to prevent the publication of the autobiography of Ben Collins, the mystery driver known as the Stig in Top Gear, the BBC TV series. The High Court refused to grant the injunction and the book, The Man in the White Suit, has now been published.
Davenport Lyons had been accused of trying to extort money from people for alleged copyright infringement. The law firm had accused up to 25,000 people of downloading material such as computer games, music and even pornography that the computer users allegedly know nothing about. This has led to a barrage of complaints against the law firm and investigations by organisations such as Which?.
In 2008 an official complaint was made by the Consumers' Association to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) about Davenport-Lyons' "campaign of letters alleging illegal filesharing".
The case against Davenport Lyons partners David Gore and Brian Miller was the subject of a 7-day hearing at the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT), starting 31 May 2011.
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