Infringement of Intellectual Property Rights and Licensing
Patents are far from being mere paper tigers! In the trade press and elsewhere we often hear about companies engaged in legal disputes over the infringement of property rights, i.e. infringements of patents, trademarks, utility models or designs. EHF is your ideal partner for the enforcement of your intellectual property rights, which we know inside out from their prosecution. The same applies to your defense against similar property rights of third parties.
Settlement or litigation – enforcing your IP rights
Securing an intellectual property right, such as the grant of a patent, the registration of a utility model or a trademark as well as the registration of a design, is necessary to protect your intellectual property. However, the right of prohibition associated with the respective intellectual property rights must be actively enforced in order to realize the associated strategic and/or financial advantages over a competitor. This often leads to a legal dispute due to infringement of intellectual property rights. However, there are also good reasons and possibilities to forego often costly and time-consuming legal proceedings. And this is where we come in. We provide you with the best possible advice and support you in choosing the right path for your company.
Why enforce an intellectual property right?
You have discovered that a competitor is appropriating your know-how or unique selling point, for example by placing a product on the market, by using a confusingly similar trademark or by using an almost identical design. With your patent, registered trademark or registered design, you can take legal action against that competitor with the aim of preventing any continuation of the IP infringement and obtaining damages for past infringement.
Enforcing an IP right – our services
We support you with the various strategies for enforcing an IP right. This firstly concerns the infringement proceedings conducted in close cooperation with attorneys-at-law, which are usually accompanied by parallel legal validity proceedings.
We also help you:
- to enforce the rights and claims, to which you are entitled on the basis of a court judgment, against a competitor, for example for injunction or information and submission of accounts
- to successfully conduct settlement and licensing negotiations and conclude them with legally binding contracts
Should urgent action be necessary, for example, because a competitor unlawfully presents or intends to present a new product at a trade fair that makes use of one of your intellectual property rights, we will help you to initiate a temporary injunction or effect customs action in order to protect your rights in the short term.
We offer our clients comprehensive advice in a personal meeting.
Proven experts for complex challenges
With EHF’s experience and expertise at your side, you are well equipped for the special requirements and challenges of enforcing an IP right.
Why is EHF an excellent choice?
We determine and analyze the situation in order to develop an optimal strategy with you. As a law firm with its roots in industry, entrepreneurial thinking is in our DNA. We focus on the prospects of success and carefully weigh the cost-benefit risk. We advise you on alternatives in order to avoid legal proceedings. We keep a close eye on economic efficiency in balance with a patent law assessment of the situation.
In disputes over intellectual property rights, a variety of constellations may arise between competing parties. Is the competitor an OEM, a supplier, a direct or indirect competitor, or an end customer? Every constellation requires careful analysis. We are very familiar with such analyses, and our industry history in particular helps us to understand the respective situation from the company’s point of view.
Our many experienced patent attorneys are at home in different technical fields and provide the best possible technical and legal expertise. We are very familiar with both preliminary legal protection and main proceedings in court and are active in district courts and higher regional courts, in particular the leading court in Düsseldorf, the Federal Patent Court and the Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH).
Intellectual property right disputes require a high degree of flexibility. Short-term communications, hectic before negotiations, urgent consultations with you; we are accustomed to all of this and have the time.
EHF does not have its own attorneys-at-law – for good reason. We believe that every case requires cooperation between specialized patent attorneys and specialized attorneys-at-law. We work closely with law firms we know and trust, depending on the case and the technology.
We work closely with you and our partner law firms in both offensive proceedings and defensive proceedings. We place great emphasis on good teamwork to achieve maximum success.
If infringements of intellectual property rights do not only affect the domestic market, we work closely with experienced and renowned partner law firms in all important industrial locations.
Get in touch!
Patentanwaltsgesellschaft mbH
Schlossschmidstr. 5
80639 Munich
Germany