When you sign up for this service, we will monitor a specific product or a competitor or both. Our monitoring service provides you with a unique opportunity to protect your own design rights, while keeping an eye on applications filed by your competitors and staying up to date on market developments.
How does our design monitoring service work?
Our monitoring of registered designs is based on the databases in which Danish and foreign design authorities register rights. The results will be sent to you once a month or at the intervals you request – regardless of whether you have selected monitoring of your own or a competitor’s design. In this way, you will know if a design is registered which may challenge the market for your product or if a competitor registers a new design, while staying up to date on market developments.
Research conducted by the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) shows that small and medium-sized enterprises choosing to protect their designs have 17 per cent higher earnings per employee than SMEs without design protection. Enforcement of design rights is one of the reasons for this difference. Not only in the EU but also in the rest of the world, design monitoring is an important factor in the fight against counterfeits encroaching on the market shares of design owners.
Monitoring of unregistered designs
The monitoring of unregistered designs is based on online searches, and we offer this service on a monthly basis in the same way as our monitoring service for registered designs. With this type of monitoring, you have a unique opportunity to find out whether a third party imitates your design and tries to sell counterfeits online.
You may also use us to have scam webshops shut down or to have counterfeit products removed from major online portals. With online brand protection, you take back the control of your brand. This design monitoring service will enable you to discover an additional segment of infringements, which might not be discovered by conventional means. The monitoring service also contributes to providing a broader picture of the industry, as it enables you to discover infringements in all parts of the world.
What do you do if you discover that your design has been copied?
It is important to act quickly against infringement to prevent the counterfeit product from being made available to customers. You could try to contact the infringer yourself, but in our experience, the effect will be much greater if you let us take over the case. As attorneys, we can enforce your rights more forcefully, and in several cases, we have closed the matter almost immediately after our customers had unsuccessfully attempted to do so.
Often, we can enforce your rights relatively easily, but should the matter end up with a lawsuit, our attorneys are also well prepared to handle that. They have extensive experience with such lawsuits, which is a core aspect of their expertise.
How can we help you?
We have quite a few specialists who are highly skilled in performing design monitoring searches – of both registered and unregistered designs and of competitors. We have access to all relevant databases and have extensive experience in setting up conventional monitoring of registered designs. Moreover, we have the specific knowledge required to search for results online by combining images with the right search text.
Are you in any doubt as to the type of monitoring which would suit your company best? Our experts are ready to advise you based on your specific mix of rights.
