Registration rights for earlier industrial designs protecting the appearance of a product may constitute an obstacle to have protection granted for a figurative or three-dimensional trademark or for an industrial design, and may hinder manufacturing, importing or selling a product with a specific appearance.
The industrial design search helps to reduce the above risks by finding earlier industrial designs that are potentially colliding with the searched design.
The subject of design search is usually the proposed appearance of a product or packaging, e.g. the design of a chair, the appearance of a bottle etc., since previously registered designs may constitute an obstacle to the sale of a product with a particular appearance or a product in a particular packaging.
To ensure that there is no risk of collision, it is recommended to supplement the industrial design search with a trademark application/registration search.
The industrial design search is conducted for a design classified in accordance with the Locarno Classification (The International Classification of Industrial Designs).
The standard search covers industrial designs protected in the territory of Poland, i.e. designs registered under the national procedure, the Community procedure or the international procedure with designation of Poland or the European Union.
We offer services tailored to our Clients’ needs and requirements, including searches supplemented with the analysis of data available on the Internet. This is helpful in determining whether the searched design, although not applied for/registered as an industrial design, has been used on the market which might well lead to a serious conflict in trade.
The search report presents full details of the colliding industrial designs found, conclusions drawn from the search and our assessment of the chances for having protection granted for the searched design.
We provide also comprehensive services with regard to industrial design searches conducted abroad with the help of well-proven foreign companies which specialize in conducting multi-market searches and which offer preferential fees for our Clients.