Securing, defending and valuating industrial designs
Brandon IP helps you in all the stages of the protection, the defense and the valuation of your designs.
What is a design or model?
The purpose of the design or model is to protect the appearance of your creations. Indeed, this can be a differentiating element from the competition and a real value for you or for your company.
According to article L.511-1 of the French Intellectual Property Code, “the appearance of a product, or part of a product, characterized in particular by its lines, its contours, colors, shape, texture or materials. These characteristics may be those of the product itself or of its ornamentation.” This article concerns industrial or artisanal objects, packaging, graphic symbols, typographic characters and presentations.
Examples of granted designs:
For the design to be valid, it must meet two cumulative conditions: be new and have its own character or individual character.
To be new, no identical or nearly identical design must have been disclosed before the filing date. Novelty must be understood in the broad sense, whatever the time and place.
As to it’s the own or individual character, it is considered that the design should not give rise to a sense of déjà vu in comparison with the corpus of existing objects. It is based on the overall impression.
Moreover, the shape of the creation which will be protected by a design should not be determined solely by the technical function of the product. For example, the shape of a diesel engine may be protected by a design but its technical characteristics will be subject to the filing of a patent, both can be combined for the same product.
Finally, the design, like the trademark, must not harm general standards of public decency.
Protection by design is also cumulative with copyright, if need be.
A registered design benefits from a protection of 5 years, renewable every 5 years for a maximum period of 25 years. It carries value and therefore can be valued in the same way as patents and trademarks.
Support from Brandon IP
Our intellectual property attorneys analyze your creation and determine whether protection by design is appropriate. If so, they will help you validate it under optimal conditions.
If prior art searches are necessary in order to check the novelty of the creation and ensure that no identical or similar design already exists, our experts can carry them out for you. Following these searches, our consultants and attorneys define with you the protection strategy best suited to your needs and your situation.
Our intellectual property attorneys then file your design, in France, in the European Union or worldwide, depending on your areas of interest, and carry out all the procedures up to registration with Offices of the selected countries or regions (for France, this will be the INPI, EUIPO for the European Union).
Thereafter, Brandon IP helps defend your rights against third parties in the event of a dispute.
Finally, the firm also supports you in defining an exploitation strategy for your creations (through partnerships or licensing, the drafting of dedicated contracts, the financial evaluation of assets, etc.), in collaboration with Brandon Valorisation.
To find out more about our services, contact us.
The services offered by Brandon IP for your designs:
We offer support in all stages of the protection of your designs, for example:
1/ The acquisition of your intellectual property rights and keeping them valid
- Protection strategy: jointly determining the distinguishing features of your business that can be covered by the filing
- Verification of the availability of the design or model through prior art search
- Application formalities of industrial designs: selection of views, suitable classification
- Follow-up of the examination procedures before the Offices
- Watching and monitoring of due dates
- Registration of modifications in the Office registers
- Filing and international extensions
2/ The defense of your rights
- Filing and monitoring of administrative proceedings for instance before the EUIPO
- Pre-litigation procedures: sending of cease-and-desist letters
- Organization of infringement seizure
- Lawsuits for infringement, unfair competition and others, in partnership with specialized lawyers
3/ The valuation of your intellectual property rights
- Negotiation and drafting of contracts (transfer, license, coexistence agreement and others)
- Audit of your rights portfolio
- Advice concerning IP portfolio management
- Financial valuation studies of your intangible assets, with our partner Brandon Valorisation, innovation Consultants
- Economic valuation: search for licensees or partners for the exploitation of your IP rights
Brandon IP, expert for more than 155 years in the protection of your intellectual property
Founded in 1866, Brandon IP, formerly Blétry Frères, is one of the oldest firms dedicated to intellectual property in France.
Brandon IP works on all aspects of intellectual property, from the establishment of an appropriate strategy to optimize the management of IP rights (filing, defense, etc.) to their valuation (operating strategy, licensing, research and negotiation of industrial and commercial partnership agreements, assessment of the value of assets, etc.), in collaboration with Brandon Valorisation.
The firm helps companies of all sizes in protecting their patents, trademarks, designs and models, and other intellectual property rights, and provides customized services that meet their needs as closely as possible.
As a guarantee of our expertise, Brandon IP is ranked among the best French patent and trademark firms by the rating agency Leaders League.
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