Hotel Brand IP Counsel in 2026: IP Appears 1.5 Times as Often as Usual

A general counsel at a hotel group who goes looking for trademark lawyers for hotel brands is buying into a sector where IP work weighs more than usual. Sartori & Partners data show that intellectual property lawyers worked on 17.0% of hospitality and leisure deals in the 12 months to October 2026, 111 deals in all, against 11.1% of all dated deals. The sector's IP rate is 1.5 times the rate across the whole record. Two cautions frame every figure here. A deal count is a count of matters on record, and in IP it includes cases taken from public court and trademark-office records, so it shows how often a practice appears, never what it bills. And one deal can carry lawyers from several practices while many carry no practice label, so practice shares overlap and do not divide the sector between practices.

The over-weight shows from both ends of the record. Seen from the practice, hospitality and leisure was the client sector on 2.1% of IP deals. Seen from the whole record, the sector was the client on 1.4% of all dated deals, so its weight inside IP work is 1.5 times its weight overall. The sector is small: 652 deals over 12 months, against 48,131 dated deals in all. No yearly series is published for IP work done for hospitality clients, and no breakdown of those deals by city or firm, so the over-weight is a 12-month reading rather than a trend.

For a hotel or leisure company, the practical point is that IP is not an occasional add-on to the outside counsel roster. It turns up on the sector's deals at 1.5 times the rate seen elsewhere. Budget for it as a standing line, and ask any firm pitched for general hospitality work who on its own bench runs the trademark and court docket.

In the Sartori & Partners deal record, corporate and M&A lawyers worked on 30.7% of the sector's deals, capital markets lawyers on 17.8% and IP lawyers on 17.0%. Across all dated deals the second and third of those practices sit 15.3 points apart, capital markets at 26.4% and IP at 11.1%. Hospitality pulls IP almost level with capital markets, a pairing the record as a whole does not show. Real estate is the other practice the sector lifts: its lawyers sat on 10.7% of hospitality deals, against 2.9% of all deals.

A company that staffs its matters around a deal team alone leaves out a practice that appears on its sector's work about as often as capital markets does. When the corporate firm offers to cover IP as well, ask whether its own IP lawyers take the file or whether it goes to another firm, and what that hand-off adds to the time a filing deadline allows.

Disputes and investigations were the type on 29.1% of hospitality and leisure deals, 190 deals, ahead of M&A at 22.9% and capital markets at 16.3%. Across all dated deals the order is different: capital markets comes first at 25.7%, with disputes and investigations at 25.0%. The sector's disputes figure sits 4.1 points above the record-wide one, and its capital markets figure 9.4 points below. Some deals carry no type label, so the rows below are not a complete split.

Inside the IP practice, across clients in every sector, disputes and investigations were the type on 95.3% of deals. The record does not say how many of the sector's disputes had IP lawyers on them, since no figure joins the two for hospitality alone. What it does say is that a hotel company buying IP counsel is buying a contested-matters practice. Judge the team on matters taken through a court or a trademark office to a result, and price the work by phase, the way litigation is priced, not as a transaction fee.

Sartori & Partners lateral records show that IP lateral moves held flat (+7.2%), from 987 in the 12 months to September 2025 to 1,058 in the 12 months to September 2026. Partner moves on their own held flat (+8.0%), from 326 to 352. Over the same windows IP deals on record rose 20.9%, from 4,399 to 5,319, a faster rise than the 10.6% growth in all dated deals.

The two counts measure different things. Lateral moves are lawyers changing firms; deals are matters on record across every client sector, hospitality included. One does not explain the other. Read side by side, they say the IP lawyers available to a hotel company moved between firms at an unchanged pace while the practice carried more matters than a year earlier. Expect fuller calendars, not a crowd of partners looking for new clients: ask for the live matter load of the partner proposed, and put a response time into the engagement terms.

No adviser list exists for IP work in hospitality alone. Two lists stand on either side of it, and each is wider than the pair. The sector list ranks the firms on the most hospitality and leisure deals of every type, M&A, capital markets and disputes included. The IP list ranks the firms on the most IP deals for clients in every sector. Latham & Watkins heads the sector list in the 21-40 band of deals over 12 months; Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton heads the IP list in the 151-250 band.

Checked name by name, the two top 10 lists share a single firm: Barnes & Thornburg, 2nd on the sector list and 4th on the IP list. The overlap is small, so a shortlist built from either list alone will miss what the other one shows. Start with the firm on both, then test each IP name on its hospitality matters and each sector name on whether its own IP lawyers do the work. A firm missing from both lists is not thereby out of the running: the lists rank only the most active ten.

Treat IP as core outside counsel, not a specialist call made once a year. Sartori & Partners counts put IP lawyers on 17.0% of the sector's deals, against 11.1% across the record, and the practice ranks third among those on hospitality work. Hire for contested work, since disputes and investigations are the sector's first deal type at 29.1%. Protect partner time, because IP deals on record rose 20.9% while lateral movement in the practice did not pick up. Open the shortlist with the one firm on both adviser lists, then test the rest against the list they are missing from.