Design protection: protect your product’s appearance

Design protection: protect your product’s appearance

When your design is infringed, the value of your brand decreases. With design protection, however, your investment is protected, while your investors are offered a quality guarantee and your brand is strengthed against competition.

With design registration, the appearance of your product is protected against copying and from imitations appearing on the market. Design protection can be enforced for up to 25 years.

This type of protection also gives investors and collaborators the assurance that your design is unique and, importantly, that you have made the relevant considerations before submitting your design application.

As a positive consequence, attracting capital investment and/or setting up collaborations that have the potential to further develop your design and brand become much easier.

Seek design protection from an early stage to secure the value in you company, now and in the future.

When should design protection be sought?

The time to seek design protection is as soon as a design has been developed. You will also want to have decided on the countries where the product will be marketed and sold.

We recommend speaking to a design advisor early in the process.

Get answers to your design protection questions

Over time, we have heard many questions regarding protecting the design of machines, packaging, furniture, clothes, fabrics, toys, tools and food products.

We have gathered these frequently asked questions here, making it easier for you to get answers to your questions regarding, amongst others, the advantages of design registration, what design protection approximately costs, and whether there are benefits to co-registration.

 

Co-labs: Would you like to collaborate with other brands?

Co-labs: Would you like to collaborate with other brands?

Design protection is sometimes necessary before two or more professional entities enter collaborative agreements or co-labs.

Design protection provides a perfect starting point from which to enter a collaborative agreement, in particular in cases where others want to use your design since the right is a de facto asset, which may be purchased or licensed.

Strategic advice from sketch-board to enforcement

Our design attorneys and administrators have decades-long experience advising on the strategic use of trademarks, patents and design.

Our consultants can help with everything from preliminary searches to registering your design and assessing whether your product should also be protected by further IP, such as a patent or trademark.

Click one of our consultants to find out more.