Intellectual Property
What your lawyer can do for you
#Property
#Intellectual
We advise you and assist you in protecting and transferring your intellectual property rights
We help you determine what can be protected and what cannot. We advise you on the strategy to adopt and take all the necessary steps for you to protect your rights to your creations and innovations or to pass them on. Your project cannot be protected by intellectual property rights? We are here too!
Trademarks, drawings and designs
- Validity study for trademark projects or industrial design rights
- We assist you in determining the scope of work for trademark projects and industrial design rights (which goods and services, which territories?)
- Prior art searches
- Filing formalities, follow-up after registration
- Renewal, INPI registration of events affecting your trademark or industrial design
- License or assignment agreement
Copyright, Software, Databases
- Assistance to register a specific date to your works (Soleau envelope, deposit,etc.)
- Assignment contract, publishing contract
- User Licenses
Other assets
- Domain name: reservation strategy, monitoring, recovery (UDRP / URS procedures), redemption, renewal, assignment.
- Know-how: we assist you with in defining, protecting, assigning, licensing, and with confidentiality agreements.
We defend your intellectual property rights
We assist you in defending your intellectual property rights or when an intellectual property right is opposed to you.
- We assist you in establishing proof of counterfeiting (definition and implementation of the evidentiary strategy, requests for production of documents, preparation of seizure operations with a bailiff (huissier))
- We defend your rights and interests in any proceedings, initiated by us or directed against you (whatever the subject may be: opposition, infringement, nullity, forfeiture,etc.).
Monitoring of new registrations likely to infringe your rights, monitoring of domain name reservations.
Your team
The team is multidisciplinary, and we combine our skills
and experience because we have our clients’ best interests at heart.
You have questions. We are here to help you.
How can my creative work be protected?
An invention? The name of my company or product? The design of my product? My website? A connected object?
It is important to know beforehand what you want to protect and the type of intellectual property right that we will be able to apply for: trademark, patent, copyright, industrial design, etc.
We help you determine what can be protected with intellectual property and what cannot. If intellectual property is not an option, we give you other solutions to protect your creative work.
Is my creative work indeed protectable?
Is my invention new? Is my brand available? Does my design have its own character?
Depending on the intellectual property right project at hand, it is necessary to see whether the criteria set out in the law are met for the creation or innovation to be protected by intellectual property rights.
We help you answer this question and determine the validity of your project with regard to applicable law, in particular by carrying out prior art searches.
Where should I protect my creative work? Which strategy should we adopt?
To be protected, trademarks, patents and industrial designs need to be registered with a body such as the National Intellectual Property Institution. You will only be protected in the territory for which you have claimed an intellectual property right.
We help you determine the territory or territories where you need to protect your creative work, and define with you the appropriate protection strategy based on your needs.
I noticed that a competitor had copied one of my models that I had made sure to protect! What should I do?
The first thing you should do is prove the occurrence of counterfeiting. The best piece of evidence in this matter is a bailiff’s report (constat d’huissier). Often times, it will be necessary to carry out a “saisie-contrefaçon.” Under French law, this procedure is a way to evidence the infringement and, more generally, any violation of an intellectual property right, to establish the extent of the counterfeiting and quantify the damages you incurred in result of same. Such action must be authorized by a judge. Once a piece of evidence is secured, it will be time to negotiate and see if an amicable solution can be reached. But above all, it will be time to file a legal action and request that your design stops being copied and obtain compensation for the damages incurred.
We assist you in all stages, to build your case, and advise you on the actions to be taken, while taking into account your situation and your activity.
I have registered a trademark, but I have received an opposition from someone who considers that my trademark is too close to his/hers. Is my project falling through?
Not necessarily. A careful comparison must be carried out, between your brand as filed and the brand on which the opposition is based, not only with regard to apparent signs but also with regard to the goods and services involved.
We will be conducting such a study to advise you on how to deal with the opposition. A trademark coexistence agreement may be proposed. In any case, we will assist you in the opposition proceedings to defend your trademark.
