Design Law

Protect yourself from imitations

Your designs are an essential part of your marketing and integral to your success. Through registered designs, we help you protect the aesthetic form of your product from imitation. Our attorneys have many years of experience in the registration of both national and international designs and their subsequent enforcement before the relevant courts.

What can we do for you? We advise and support our clients in the following areas:

  • Clarification of questions relating to design law including specific aesthetic details of the design
  • National, Europe-wide and worldwide design searches
  • Strategies for national and international design registrations
  • Consultation on non-registered community designs
  • Representation in all proceedings before the German Patent and Trade Mark Office (DPMA), the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the German Federal Patent Court
  • Representation before the European General Court and the European Court of Justice
  • Preparation and negotiation of licence agreements
  • Analysis and evaluation of the intellectual property rights of third parties in markets relevant to you
  • Development of protection strategies for new products, two- or three-dimensional aesthetic creations and typographical characters
  • National and international design renewals
  • Legal enforcement of design rights in the event of infringement

Since 2002, the legal situation for design protection in the European Union has significantly improved: With a single community design application, several new product designs can be bundled together in a single registration, which provides unitary protection covering all EU countries for up to 25 years.

Our strengths for your benefit

We possess outstanding expertise and experience in the area of international design protection. You benefit from our global network of specialists, with whom we have developed successful and trusting working relationships over the course of many years.