Services
- Prosecution, including filing national applications and handling office actions issued against international applications
- Design searches
- Trials for invalidation
- Opinions on infringement regarding design rights and unfair competition
- Customs seizures
- Enforcement (cease and desist letters, take-down notices, litigation, etc.)
- Licensing
- Recordals of assignment or name and address change
- Other consultation services
Features
Responsive and Reliable Team Serving Only Overseas Clients
We have established a team specializing in overseas clients. The team comprises patent and design attorneys fluent in English who are well-experienced in handling cases on behalf of overseas clients and administrative staff who handle case management such as deadline management. The whole team closely collaborates to tackle any complex and urgent matters and offers the optimal solution to the overseas client promptly. By virtue of the shorter deadlines set by the Japanese Patent Office (JPO) or court for domestic entities’ than for foreign entities’, typical law firms tend to place priority on domestic entities’ cases. Our design team dedicated to overseas clients focuses on their cases to avoid such a problem.
Best Solution to Issues Specific to Overseas Clients
We pride ourselves on managing numerous design cases for overseas clients and our thorough knowledge in addressing issues specific to overseas clients. For instance, owing to the difference in the requirements for specifications and drawings between Japan and foreign countries, we propose the best route to optimally mitigate the risk of rejection relating to formalities and maintain the priority before we prepare and file an application. We normally do not charge any additional fees for the pre-filing review.
Diversity of Services
We harness our profound knowledge and extensive experience not only in design prosecution, but across multiple design services to provide you holistic services of design matters. Suppose you inadvertently fail to obtain a design or patent right, we can team up with our patent department to develop an alternative approach (e.g. conversion between design and patent applications) to protect your design or invention. If you wish to protect your traditional design for which a design registration does not exist or has expired, we can provide concrete advice about trademarks or the Unfair Competition Prevention Act. Whenever you encounter problems on your design such as infringement of design right, we can execute multiple options including cease and desist demands, customs seizures, and sending takedown notices to platforms. Depending on the case, we work with our high-caliber attorneys-at-law in IP enforcement.