InterAlia’s design services:

General advice, prosecution and actions before design offices:

• Spanish and Community design applications
• Oppositions to Spanish designs
• Revocation of Community designs
• Advice about protection as Unregistered Community designs
• Recordation of assignments and licenses

Dispute advice and litigation:

• Dispute assessment and advice about resolution strategies
• Drafting and answering cease and desist letters
• Out-of-Court settlement negotiations and drafting of agreements
• Litigation before the Spanish Courts acting on behalf of plaintiff or defendant in all sorts of proceedings concerning design rights, such as:
• Registered and Unregistered design infringement
• Revocation of Spanish designs
• Disputes about design ownership
• Court appeals from Spanish PTO decisions
• Appeals to the General Court of the European Union from Community Designs Office decisions

Inter-Alia’s Spanish and Community designs application service includes for a single charge:

• Filing of application
• Reporting registration or refusal with advice about appeals
• Reporting oppositions (Spanish designs) with assessment and price quotation for each possible resolution option
• Sending renewal notices

QUICK POINTS ABOUT DESIGNS

• Spanish and Community designs are examined and registered within days of a correctly-filed application.
• Multiple-design applications are allowed.
• The Community design is the choice of foreign applicants, because the difference in the amount of office fees (a 10-design application costs €63,68 for each design in Spain an €350 for the first design and €175 for the rest in the EU) is made up by the Community design’s much wider territorial scope.
• It is important to understand the interplay between registered and unregistered designs: The first disclosure of the design is the starting point for the grace period and for the protection as unregistered community design. This first disclosure may occur outside or inside the EU. The test is whether it is apt to be known by specialist circles in the trade. Within one year from first disclosure, designer can validly register his design (grace period). If he decides not to register, there will be a further two year’s term of protection as unregistered design in the territory of the EU.
• Unregistered designs do not protect against designs created independently by third parties and there may be practical problems in substantiating the entitlement to design and its first disclosure which make it advisable to register, before disclosure or within the grace period, if there are reasonable commercial chances for the design.