The protection of your ideas
The options for protecting one's own products against imitations are quite diverse and, in their entirety, offer an effective means of securing one's own intellectual property and demonstrating one's own innovative strength in an effective advertising manner.
The patent
The patent is the best known and most frequently used technical property right. It serves the temporary protection (max. 20 years) of technical equipment, chemical substances and technical processes as well as the products directly manufactured thereby. The patent is granted following an examination of protectability by the Patent Office, whereby a patent as a so-called examined property right has a higher degree of legal certainty.
The utility model
The utility model is very similar to the patent and is often regarded as the “small patent”. It serves to protect technical devices and chemical substances for a limited period of time (max. 10 years) – processes are explicitly excluded from utility model protection. The registration and its publication take place promptly (usually within approx. two weeks until the registration and approx. two months until its publication), but without an examination of protectability by the patent office, which means that a utility model as a so-called unexamined property right has less legal certainty. A more detailed comparison between patents and utility models can be found here.
The trademark
The trademark serves as an indication of the origin of a product or service. It stands for quality and is intended to evoke a recognition effect in the buyer in order to persuade him to buy this particular product or choose this particular service provider from the wide range of goods and services on offer. This applies to consumer products as well as capital goods.
The design
The design patent or registered design protects a design, i.e. the aesthetic appearance of a product. An aesthetically pleasing design of a product can be very memorable for the customer, lead to a high perception of value and thus become an essential purchase criterion, just like the quality of the product or its technical functionality, which are perhaps more comparable within a product range than an individual design. A design can therefore also be an asset worthy of protection.
Comprehensive protectionof your property
If one considers the possibilities of these four types of industrial property rights, the combination of the respective property right for the various aspects of a product – technical function (patent or utility model), indication of origin (trademark) and external appearance (design or registered design) – can create comprehensive protection against imitation and protect one’s own freedom of action.
The employee invention right
Furthermore, employee invention law is inextricably linked to the development of new products in companies, as these developments are based on inventions by employees and are only transferred to the employer by means of employee invention law. Since the assessment of whether an employee’s idea is inventive and therefore patentable or utility modelable is based on the criteria of patent or utility model law, which patent attorneys are very familiar with, the legal field of employee invention law also falls within the area of expertise of patent attorneys.
