Trademark

The trademark protects your designated goods and services and distinguishes them from the goods and services of your competitors.

We are in charge of an important trademark portfolio including French trademarks, Community trademarks and international trademarks. We have all the necessary experience and expertise to provide you guidance in your trademark strategy, your trademark application or more generally in every acts and events that occur during the life of your trademark.

Maître Luc BARNY is an Authorized Lawyer before the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM). He is empowered to file French, Community and international Trademarks.

Trademark strategy

To file a trademark application to protect the sign under which you conduct your commercial activity or under which you market goods and/or services can be an important asset in your commercial strategy.

The trademark allows you to prevent a competitor from conducting its activity or from marketing its goods or services under an identical or similar sign and, as a consequence, to avoid any risk of confusion in the mind of the consumer between your activity and the activity of your competitors. To conduct an activity without filing for a trademark involves a risk that such sign or a similar sign may be reserved as a trademark by a third party. Such third party may thereafter take legal proceedings in respect of infringements against you and act as a barrier to your professional activities.

As the case may be, to file a trademark application may be considered an abuse of law and may even be an infringement.

We bring you our expertise to sharpen your trademark strategy, by helping you to define a distinctive identity and by delineating the list of goods and services to protect to reflect your project at best.

Trademark application

As an Authorized Lawyer before the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market and a former Conseil en Propriété Industrielle (patent attorney), Maître Luc BARNY has all the necessary experience and expertise to file for French, Community and international trademarks.

To avoid any opposition to the registration of your trademark or infringement proceedings, we perform priority search in France (for previous trademarks as well as previous company names and previous domain names) and in the European Union (for previous Community, national and international trademarks) before the trademark application.

We work in close collaboration with foreign renowned lawyer’s office for the international applications and priority searches.

Obtaining and defending the trademark

We will continue to bring you our counsel and assistance after the delivery of the trademark and during all the period of its validity.

Thus, we can carry out in particular:

• The renewal of the trademark
• The trademark litigation:
  • Opposition to the registration of an identical or similar trademark
  • Application for declaration of invalidity or revocation of the trademark
  • Infringement proceedings
  • Request for seizure for counterfeiting (“saisie-contrefaçon”) or procedure for detention under customs control (“retenue en douane”)
  • Drafting of trademark coexistence agreement
• The negotiation and drafting of commercial agreements concerning your trademark, such as trademark assignment agreements or trademark licence agreements
• The registration of agreements which affect the ownership or use of the trademark.