Designs / Copyright
Acquisition of rights
Because each project is unique, our support will always start with a prior study to advise you on the most appropriate strategy for your actual requirements and development objectives as well as for the definition and implementation of your strategy, while respecting budgetary constraints.
Our design/copyright experts will assist you in the protection of your creations and give you the appropriate strategy. They provide you with day-to-day support in filing and renewing French, European, international and/or foreign national designs. Backed by experience acquired on the ground and advanced knowledge of the competitive environments of our clients’ sectors, our expertise can help you in defining the best strategy, whatever the context. By defining the scope of research and analysing the obtained results we will check your freedom to operate in commercialising your design and organise its protection according to your markets and competitors.
Our international network of responsive and committed correspondents allows us to master various legislations and helps our design attorneys to protect your creations at the international, national, European or French levels. As European design attorneys, our experts represent you throughout the grant procedure before the French IP office (INPI), the EUIPO, WIPO and foreign national IP offices, in cooperation with our local agents. Beau de Loménie is therefore able to manage all of your filing and renewal procedures for designs. Thanks to our proven network of correspondents, we are able to manage all of your procedures on a global basis.
Beau de Loménie’s experts systematically oversee the quality of your registered design applications, taking as their standard the most demanding requirements coming from the strictest offices during the examination phases. They will examine each design application in this way before filing with the competent offices, so that any foreseeable problems can be eliminated ahead of time. In particular, the quality of designs will be scrupulously checked to ensure compliance with the requirements of national offices and with the INPI, the EUIPO and WIPO. We therefore deliver optimal quality and the smoothest implementation of the procedure between filing your application and obtaining your certificate of design filing.
In order to be proactive in defending your IP rights, Beau de Loménie is a “Key User” in the EUIPO’s management programme. Thus, the firm is involved and consulted in advance by the EUIPO during the implementation or modification of electronic tools used in the design registration and renewal procedures. This programme enables optimisation of the management of your IP assets, or lets you find out fees and payments related to your rights at any given moment.
As copyright specialists, our IP attorneys will assist you to acquire cumulative protection on your creations, with the primary objective of enabling you to preserve your leadership and market exclusivity. The question of copyright should be raised for any original creation (software, design or a graphical work). Our experts will be able to support you acquiring and securing these rights through strategic and administrative procedures that only IP professionals are capable of anticipating and managing in their entirety.
Development, securing and exploitation of rights
Before planning to file a design, a prior rights search should be carried out to check that your project, and the IP rights that may be attached to it, are not endangered or blocked by third parties’ rights. It is therefore important to seek experts’ advice to ensure the availability of the rights that you wish to acquire and secure.
Prior to any filing, pre-litigation or litigation Beau de Loménie’s technical documentation department, particularly specialised in searches for designs, and equipped with private databases, can perform prior rights searches with the various design registers (national, European and international). We prepare a report based on a documented legal advice with appropriate proposals on possible strategies, to limit or eliminate any risks attached to your project. We also set up watch services on the design filings made by your competitors.
We represent you during your actions for cancellation of European designs before the EUIPO, whether as an opponent or proprietor, in the case of actions enforced or brought by a third party against one or more of your designs. We also implement and coordinate actions for design cancellation with our lawyers before the French national jurisdictions and with our foreign colleagues before the competent foreign offices and/or jurisdictions.
Backed by multi-sectorial experience, our expertise and advanced knowledge of the legal environment surrounding your strategy, Beau de Loménie’s experts will advise and assist you in negotiating and writing your assignment and licence contracts for designs, as well as with distribution or consortium agreements. We rely on the expertise of an internal team of former lawyers, specialised in IP and contract law.
Claiming your copyright enables you to exploit it. Parts of your creation/work may be exploited, with your authorisation, by a third-party company according to an appropriate contract. Our experts can support you in negotiating licence or rights assignment contracts to get remuneration for your copyright. Conversely, if you wish to exploit a work protected by copyright, our experts will help you in the strategy for acquiring and exploiting it.
Protection
The entirety of any innovation or creation in your company must be considered as your IP: beyond a protection by a patent or a trademark, you may therefore need to protect your creation by a design concerning its appearance (lines, contours, colours, shapes, textures and materials). This design protection constitutes a tool that is easier to implement than copyright.
Beau de Loménie’s design experts provide you with day-to-day cooperation to advise you and protect your designs.
Indeed, when a client begins a product marketing strategy, it may wish to protect it by opposing the registration and/or use of a design by a third party because it is identical or too close to its own rights. It may also have to defend itself against a third party, which considers that the new registered and/or exploited design infringes its rights, under the same conditions.
Our design experts advise and represent you in these procedures: thus, they analyse the validity of the rights in question and any similarities or differences between the designs in question. They always act in the interest of your product and prefer dialogue over conflict, through the negotiation of agreements. Each year, our firm’s professionals manage numerous cases of pre-litigation and/or actions for invalidation of designs and negotiate, on behalf of their clients, the best agreements to ensure continuity of their strategies.
Our experts support you in the case of a potential dispute involving design law, for example in view of an infringement action (France or globally). Beau de Loménie has a proven network of international correspondents. We thus can support you in all circumstances throughout the period of the case and advise you in the pre-litigation and litigation phases to orient your strategy, both with regard to a specific case or concerning a more global problem.
A design may be one of the major elements in distinguishing your product, enabling your reputation to be built and consolidated. Any violation to this reputation, to your rights, any counterfeiting of your product is studied in-depth: counterfeit products are usually manufactured with lower quality standards. Communication concerning them is misleading or disparaging thus damaging your image and your commercial strategy. Registering your design gives you rights: by preventing the manufacture and distribution of these counterfeit products, you avoid dilution of your rights, maintain your image and control your reputation. Acting against such practices and fighting counterfeiting is therefore essential for your company, growth of your activities, maintenance of the value of your product and protection of consumers. Each year, Beau de Loménie’s experts manage a very large number of cases regarding customs retention procedure, thus representing several hundred cases per year and hundreds of thousands of counterfeit products destroyed.
Just like designs or trademarks, copyright is subject to infringement. Indeed, the reproduction of your work without a contractual undertaking constitutes a violation of your rights. Beau de Loménie’s experts intervene to stop the unlawful exploitation by the means most adapted to the situation (customs seizure, counterfeit seizure and destruction of counterfeit products) and evaluate the harm suffered.
Audit and valuation
To manage properly their IP rights, or for a specific request, each company or holder of IP rights has to analyse their IP portfolio, thus to check its adequacy with regard to the commercial activity with the aim of rationalising costs or, for example, in the context of an assignment, an acquisition of rights, or when setting up a rights licensing system.
We also support you in these procedures for auditing and valuing all or part of your portfolio.
We have proven and recognised expertise in strategies for filing and protecting designs and copyright and, more broadly, in IP matters. Thus, we are able to carry out all checks and procedures for examination, portfolio analysis and due diligence of target companies, notably during mergers and acquisitions.
Our processes include studying the activities concerned, analysing your requirements to define the checks to be carried out (verification of designs filings and territories), valuing the IP rights concerned and assessing their appropriateness.
We prepare the recommendations that will be useful to rationalise and/or complete the protection of your rights.
We also rely on our correspondents who are specialised in taxation and accountancy to effectively and accurately value your IP rights. Whether it is for the requirements of internal valuation or with the aim of a sale or a purchase, an intra-group transfer or to establish royalties for licence contracts on a title or a portfolio of IP rights, we are at your service to give you the arguments and elements that justify the value of your IP rights. We therefore support you in the collection of operational elements and data necessary to the valuation of your titles. Our expertise will enable you to successfully complete your projects securely and adapted to your requirements, and will provide you with a sound and justified study of your designs, or your IP titles, which you can rely upon during a tax inspection or for estimating losses during action for infringement.