Burness, the Edinburgh and Glasgow commercial law firm, has strengthened its presence in the fields of intellectual property and information technology with the appointment of a partner.

Burness also confirmed that later this month it will move its Glasgow office into premises in the Aurora building, on the site of the former Scottish Enterprise headquarters in Bothwell Street.

Colin Hulme, 34, becomes a Burness partner with immediate effect. Belfast-born Hulme studied law at Dundee University and trained at Semple Fraser. He worked at Dundas & Wilson - then part of the Andersen Legal empire - from 1999 to 2001, at which point he moved to Burness.

Philip Rodney, Burness's chairman, said: "Colin will focus on the contentious side of IP and technology, an area that is headed up by David Goodbrand."

"We now have what I think is the biggest commercial litigation team in Scotland, the business having grown 300% in the past five or six years. One of the differentiating factors is that we embraced the use of tech- nology at an early stage.

"Colin and I developed a ground-breaking database that is capable of marshalling enormous amounts of information for big commercial cases.

"Or at least I had the idea, and Colin put it into practice."

At Burness, Hulme has represented Profile Software in its successful software copyright action against the Airdrie-based call-centre operator Becogent Ltd. He also represented Swiss-owned energy drink Red Bull in a "switch selling" case against Albatross Leisure.

Hulme earned a mention as a leading practitioner in the current Legal Experts directory, and Legal 500 last year said he was "praised by clients as being very commercial". In November 2006, Hulme completed a master's degree in IT and telecoms law at Strathclyde University.