Domestic design system

What is a design? What is intellectual property? – Consult a patent attorney first!

The role of patent attorneys in design registration

Leave your design strategy to the patent attorneys!

Design has great potential

Design strategy is an important tool for improving brand power and is considered a pillar of a company's business strategy.

In today's world, where information holds great value, good design is expected to attract attention and have a positive impact on a company's operations.

On the other hand, the more original a design is created and the more prominent a product featuring that design becomes, the greater the risk that unrelated parties will copy it or use it without permission.

To address such risks, it is important to consult with a patent attorney and protect your design by registering it as a "design."

Furthermore, if you properly protect your design with a design right, not only will you be able to sell your products with peace of mind, but it will also help appeal to business partners and significantly improve your brand power.

In this way, making good use of design rights can bring great business benefits. Designs as intellectual property will likely play an important role in design strategies in the future.

In order to obtain rights for a design, i.e. to register a design, specialized knowledge is required. In other words, it is not enough to simply create a good design and complete the content as a design registration application; it is also necessary to collect and examine the information required by the system and make the best possible decisions.

By "specialized," we do not simply mean procedural tasks, but rather we gather various information and make a multifaceted judgment on whether a design can be registered as a design, what specific strategy should be used to proceed with the registration, etc. Patent attorneys, as intellectual property experts, are solely responsible for all tasks from application to registration of designs.

Through consultation services regarding designs, patent attorneys are deeply involved in a company's overall design strategy, accumulate information on not only the intellectual property system but also related laws, and, based on a deep understanding of the content of the business, provide support from a bird's-eye view while utilizing their knowledge as intellectual property experts.

Patent attorneys are deeply involved in the overall design strategy of a company, and while utilizing their expert knowledge, they make full use of the diverse legal systems that have been established to contribute to the realization of design strategies as business strategies. The role of a patent attorney in design is broadly divided into two. The first is to act as an advisor in design applications, and the second is to support your design strategy through design considerations.

Consult a patent attorney about design applications

In order to legally protect a design as intellectual property, it is necessary to file an application with the Japan Patent Office and undergo an examination process. If the applicant also needs to gather information and take other necessary steps, the process takes a considerable amount of time and effort. We recommend that you ask a patent attorney, who is an expert in this field, to handle the process.

For example, you can consult with a patent attorney about things like "What should I do to prevent others from copying my product design?", "What should I prepare to actually file a design application and obtain a right?", etc. In addition, they can also respond to consultations such as "How can I effectively utilize my rights after obtaining a design right?", etc.

In addition, when making a request, it is advisable to choose an office whose patent attorneys have extensive experience in design applications.

Compared to other intellectual property rights such as patents and trademarks, there are relatively few offices that specialize in designs, and the number of offices with extensive know-how is limited.

If you consult with our patent office, we will fully support you in obtaining a design right, led by our Legal Strategy Department, which has a total of more than 30 members with a wealth of experience.

Unlike patents, which grant rights to technology, and trademarks, which relate to business credit, designs are a legal field that deals with designs. Although the fields are different, designs aim to "encourage the creation of designs by protecting and utilizing designs, thereby contributing to the development of industry," and are the same as patents in that they aim to protect and utilize intellectual property.

In addition, in the intellectual property industry, in order to flexibly respond to business trends, laws are frequently revised and the Patent Office's operations are changed, so intellectual property-related systems change quite frequently. For this reason, it is very difficult to constantly collect accurate and up-to-date information.

In that sense, since many of the systems related to intellectual property, including applications and registrations at the Patent Office, are quite complicated, it is recommended that you leave the procedures and information gathering to a professional. There are many different types of experts in the world, but the role of an expert in intellectual property in particular is played by a "patent attorney."

Intellectual property rights include the above-mentioned patents, utility models, designs, and trademarks, as well as copyrights, and patent attorneys and the patent offices to which they belong are responsible for all matters related to these intellectual property rights.

The role of patent attorneys in design

Benefits of hiring a patent attorney to file a design application

As mentioned above, intellectual property rights, including design rights, can be protected as rights by filing an application with the Japan Patent Office and being registered.

However, before registration, an examination is conducted and it may be determined that "registration as a design is not permitted." Simply filing an application does not guarantee that a design will be protected. Although the cases in which "registration as a design is not permitted" are stipulated by law, the actual judgment is made individually and specifically for each design application.

In other words, you need to consider an application strategy for each design for which you wish to obtain rights. This is where the merits of hiring a patent attorney come in.

It is important to consider before filing an application whether the design can be registered as a design, what is the best form to register it in, and how to properly utilize the rights after registration. Based on our extensive experience, our patent office will propose the optimal strategy for obtaining a design right.

In addition, our patent office also provides support for training and seminars. Our patent office's experienced patent attorneys serve as lecturers and hold training and seminars from time to time to provide you with the knowledge you need to protect your valuable intellectual property from a professional perspective.

It goes without saying that you can rest assured if you entrust your application procedures to a patent attorney. However, it is also important to have a solid understanding of specialized information about your own valuable intellectual property. And in order to fully utilize the specialized advice of a patent attorney, it is also important that you yourself know about intellectual property. If you have a foundation of intellectual property knowledge, the content of your consultation will be more substantial.

By consulting with a patent attorney, you can not only receive various information, but also receive support for intellectual property strategies, such as how to utilize a design after it has been granted a right.

In addition, information related to intellectual property is updated daily due to amendments to the legal system, etc. Therefore, it is not easy to always keep up with the latest information. It is a good idea to consult a patent office that systematically accumulates information and has a system for sharing it among patent attorneys.

Our patent office website provides various information on the system and on pages introducing case studies such as trial decisions and rulings. In addition, we have posted information to support and assist our clients in their intellectual property-related activities in an easy-to-read list, so please take a look. We also introduce support for training and seminars, so please visit those if you would like to use them.

In addition to design applications, we also provide a wide range of information on other fields such as patent and trademark applications.

Design attorneys as design strategy supporters

Since intellectual property rights for designs protect the appearance of products, etc., they are said to be more prone to infringement than patents, for example, because they are easier to imitate. Infringement of design rights refers to the manufacture or sale of a design that is similar in appearance (this is expressed as "similar" in the intellectual property field).

For this reason, it is all the more important to be fully aware of the existence of designs that are protected as rights.

What you need to be careful about here is not only that your own rights are not infringed, but that you also need to be careful not to infringe on the design rights of others.

For example, in product development, there may be cases where you study existing products to consider a design. What if the existing product you used as reference is registered as a design?

Selling or advertising products that incorporate such designs will be considered an infringement of the design rights and may result in civil liability for damages or, if it becomes a criminal offense, penalties.

Therefore, when creating a design, it is essential to carefully check in advance whether there are any problems with the rights. And when making such a judgment, the perspective of a patent attorney with practical experience is extremely important.

In the case of design rights, the "drawing" (or photograph) that represents the design is extremely important, which is what makes them different from other intellectual property rights such as patents and trademarks.

The scope of design rights is determined largely based on the drawings submitted at the time of application, and the specific judgment of whether designs are "similar" is made by comparing the drawings. In making this judgment, the "overall shape of the design" and the "specific details of the design" may be compared and considered. In determining whether designs are specifically similar, it is also considered whether the part of the design that attracts particular attention (referred to as the "essential part of the design") is the above-mentioned "overall shape" or the "specific details."

In light of the above, please keep in mind that when it comes to determining whether a product with a certain design is similar to a registered design, the conclusion may differ depending on whether it is "similar" or "not similar" based on a general sense and whether a patent attorney judges it from a practical perspective.

If you were to inadvertently release a product without prior consideration and end up being sued for design right infringement, it would take a lot of time and money to respond.

That's where patent attorneys come in. Patent attorneys and patent offices are constantly accumulating and studying the design examination guidelines published by the Japan Patent Office (which provide a rough guide for what cases are deemed similar) and the conclusions handed down by the Japan Patent Office and courts. Patent attorneys can provide expert advice based on these objective grounds.

If you have even the slightest doubt, it will ultimately be wise to consult with a patent attorney, who is an expert. As the saying goes, haste makes perfect, so you want to avoid situations where you receive a warning letter or have a lawsuit filed against you for infringing intellectual property rights because you have been reluctant to take the time and expense of consulting a patent attorney.

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