Of trademarks, designs and other IP rights

What else is out there?

• A design can be very useful to protect a product's aesthetic appearance or the whole or part of a pattern. While designs normally need to be registered, in the EU it is possible to rely on an unregistered Community Design with a limited protection period of three years.
• You will need to consider filing a patent if you wish to protect new and non-obvious technical inventions. Patents are powerful but also expensive.
• Creative and artistic "works" like paintings, sculptures, texts, music, photographs, films and graphics, but also software and databases, might be protected by copyright law. The good thing is that protection arises automatically without registration.
• Confidential technical information, such as manufacturing processes, or commercial information about other aspects of your business, like clients, suppliers or pricing, can be protected as a trade secret. This requires legal and factual measures to keep the information confidential.

Protection based on various IP rights might be possible and even necessary, since the IP rights cover a variety of aspects and serve different purposes.

For example, let's look at the development of a new glass container as packaging for a product. The following IP rights might be relevant:

• The container might have a completely new, unique shape. So, protection as a 3-D trademark and/or protection as a design might be possible.
• The container could even be protected by copyright.
• If the container offers a new technical solution, a patent might be considered as well.

Since costs for protection in several countries are usually an important factor in a company's IP strategy and certain IP rights are mutually exclusive, the decision-making process is not always straightforward. Many factors need to be considered, such as:

• What is the core feature to be protected?
• What are the costs and prospects of success for various protection options?
• Might previous publications of the product have an impact on the available options?
• Is it important to be protected as long as possible or is short-term protection sufficient?
• Is it preferable to have a strong IP right and undergo a material examination during prosecution or not?
• Might a publication conflict with confidentiality interests?

IP professionals are happy to assist you in navigating through the jungle of IP rights and options to establish a tailored protection strategy.

We trust the previous articles in our blog series have offered valuable insights into considerations for trademark protection. In the upcoming months, we will focus on design protection, aiming to provide you with pertinent information to aid in your decision-making on whether to opt for trademark protection, design protection or both for your new product.

authors: Gudrun Irsa-Klingspiegl, Dominik Hofmarcher