Counterfeiting, brand takeovers or the theft of intellectual property, as well as anti-competitive practices, can cause serious damage to affected companies. In order to protect intangible assets, there are various regulations and laws, which are summarized in “industrial property rights”. These include all intellectual property rights that are of great importance for commercial use and thus for the success of a company. The primary objective of industrial property protection is to prevent unfair competition and to guarantee trademark rights.
Industrial property rights represent a high material and non-material value for companies. Utility models and non-technical property rights such as trademarks or design rights are suitable for safeguarding own developments and business areas. As valuable assets, they can account for a large part of the market value of a company and play a prominent role in financial transactions or investments. In order to ensure optimal (national and international) protection of intangible assets and the development of a sustainable market position, companies must establish effective strategies at an early stage to ensure the professional management, protection and effective enforcement of intellectual property rights.
In addition, industrial property rights also include the so-called unfair competition law, in so far as it protects commercial activities in the Act against Unfair Competition (UWG). Although the UWG does not grant the trader an absolute intellectual property right in the form of an exclusive right towards everybody, it protects traders in relation to their competitors. The rules of the UWG protect competitors, consumers and other market participants against unfair competition and prohibit unfair business practices such as misleading advertising or obstructive competition. Especially in the field of advertising, these legal requirements are of considerable importance for companies.
We review your marketing and advertising strategies for you in terms of competition law. We support you, for example, in the development of names or trademarks, in the registration of trademarks at the German Patent and Trademark Office, in the marketing of your products – especially in the legally compliant design of your advertising to protect you from attacks by competitors. We also draft license agreements for you and support you, for example, in concluding delimitation agreements.
We help you to assert your interests, e.g. if your competitors advertise with unfair means, or violate your trademark. In doing so, we design individual warnings and cease and desist declarations for you and help you to assert your interests in court. This also applies if you have been warned about an infringement.
Our clients in the field of intellectual property rights include large companies, SMEs as well as start ups in all sectors, for example a large German advertising marketer or medium-sized companies from the catering or textile industry.