Our Design Services

We are design attorneys and advise on and file applications to register designs.

Design can have a great impact on the commercial success of a product. For some products, design may be the only distinguishing feature. Therefore, it is important for businesses that depend upon design to ensure that they have legal protection for the appearance of their products.

There are two types of intellectual property rights that protect designs: registered rights which are obtained through an application procedure, and unregistered rights which can arise automatically once a design has been recorded but generally provide weaker protection.

We advise on design-related issues and help our clients to establish appropriate design protection throughout the world. Our services include:

• Registering designs at the UK Intellectual Property Office (UK IPO), the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EU IPO) and internationally. We have established relationships with patent and trade mark attorneys throughout the world and through which we can coordinate international design registration programs. Importantly, as these relationships are not fixed, we choose the attorneys we use dependent on a client's requirements.
• Conducting searches of registered designs.
• Strategic management and planning of design portfolios, including payment of renewal fees.
• Competitor monitoring: we can carry out regular searches for the publication of a competitor’s new design applications and registrations, thus keeping abreast of their patenting activity.
• Carrying out due diligence exercises on a designs portfolio and related intellectual property assets: these are often required by potential investors seeking an assessment of whether or not the intellectual property portfolio of interest is in good order.