Fabio R. Silva | Tjong & Hsia LLP

Fabio R. Silva is a commercial attorney with extensive experience in the fashion and consumer retail sector, having held senior legal positions at Burberry Limited N.A., Tory Burch LLC, Fab.com, Inc. and Giorgio Armani Corporation. Mr. Silva’s practice covers commercial real estate leasing and intellectual property matters and disputes, including copyright and trademark law. Mr. Silva is actively engaged on matters relating to commercial contracts, licensing, e-commerce and regulatory law and is a hands-on problem solver. Many of his clients are engaged in wholesale or retail activities relating to consumer goods or services.

With respect to intellectual property matters, Mr. Silva provides clients with customized guidance on building their portfolio of trademarks and copyrights, focusing on value and strength. For over 18 years, he has been effective in selecting, registering, exploiting and protecting intellectual property portfolios and handling ongoing disputes and counterfeiting issues. He has also guided clients through investor-led due diligence and through difficult legal and business issues.

Mr. Silva has also spent much of his career negotiating commercial real estate leases on behalf of his clients, whether for office space, warehouses or retail stores. He has negotiated countless leases for retailers, involving percentage rent, breakpoints, landlord contributions, radius restrictions, landlord improvements and adjacencies. He has worked closely with most major mall owners in the United States and is familiar with their approaches.

As an experienced former in-house lawyer at prominent fashion and retail companies for over ten years, Mr. Silva has an excellent understanding of retail and wholesale operations, and the associated legal risks to be mitigated. Mr. Silva seeks to add value early and often in every client relationship by providing practical, cost-effective and business-oriented solutions to legal and business problems.

Early in his legal career, Mr. Silva also took a sabbatical from his legal career to earn a degree in fashion design from the nation’s pre-eminent university for fashion, art and design, Parsons School of Design. Mr. Silva’s unusual background as a lawyer and career as a senior legal executive at a number of prominent fashion companies gives him a unique perspective and experience in advising fashion clients from start-ups to established fashion companies.