Trademarks

Trademarks can be among the most valuable assets in the communications efforts of a com-pany, and can often be crucial for their competitiveness. Trademark law is very broad and can cover everything from strategic legal considerations in the development of a new brand concept or product to the management and monitoring of existing trademarks.

What is trademark law?

A key element of trademark law is the ability to defend your trademark if you suspect it has been infringed by competitors. Today, trademark law is strongly influenced by European cooperation, and protection is mainly obtained through registration. There are both national and EU-wide trademarks. Protection may also apply to unregistered trademarks.

Strategic legal considerations for new and existing trademarks

Strategies, registrations and monitoring are an important part of trademark law. Before making in-vestments in product development, new trademarks and marketing, preparatory searches in various trademark registers can provide valuable information as an important tool to help companies make decisions. This may help prevent and avoid trademark infringement, as the searches will reveal whether others already have protection for similar trademarks.

Other trademark law considerations and assessments may also be important in the development of a new trademark concept or product. For example, it makes sense to assess which elements may be worth protecting, which forms of protection should be used and are appropriate in relation to the spe-cific concept or product. Another important part is also to review the ownership of the different ele-ments of the concept or product.

In addition to the protection of new trademarks, long-term management and monitoring is important. This includes constant monitoring of both the companies’ own existing trademarks and new trade-mark applications by competitors.

How we can help your company with trademark law issues

With a blend of unique academic excellence and extensive commercial experience, our lawyers can provide advice on all aspects of trademark law. Our specialists in trademark law have extensive ex-perience of supporting and representing Swedish and international companies in trademark law mat-ters in a wide range of industries. They also have extensive knowledge of issues that arise in con-nection with the creating new trademarks, concepts and products.

We can help you with:

• Filing trademark applications with the Swedish Patent and Registration Office (PRV), the EU Intel-lectual Property Office (EUIPO) and others
• Regular monitoring of the company’s existing trademarks and renewal of registrations, as neces-sary.
• Regular monitoring of competitors' trademark applications that could potentially damage the com-pany’s own trademarks
• Strategic advice on how companies can maintain and strengthen the legal and commercial value of their trademarks
• Ongoing work in drafting, reviewing and negotiating various trademark agreements, such as licens-ing agreements, assignment agreements, co-existence agreements, cooperation agreements and agreements for major transactions.
• Strategic legal advice on the most appropriate and cost-effective protection.

At Vinge we work closely with various law firms around the world, which facilitates the work involved in large-scale global trademark applications. We also have extensive experience in trademark dis-putes and are regularly engaged to act as counsel in court and in arbitration proceedings.

Lawyers with extensive experience in trademark law

Our law firm can provide professional advice on all aspects of trademark law. Our clients include companies in the following sectors: food, clothing, telecommunications, insurance, media, energy and manufacturing. We also work with advertising agencies and other players who focus on advertis-ing, PR, branding, design or digital marketing.

Vinge has successfully assisted a large number of Swedish and international companies in trade-mark litigation, both in and out of court. In this way, we have contributed to the development of Swe-dish trademark law practice. Several of our lawyers have also published legal articles in the field of trademark law and many of them give regular lectures in this area.

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