Protecting yourself to defend yourself
Attacking or defending yourself
Over the last few years, counterfeiting has grown significantly, facilitated by the globalization of exchanges, but also due to the development of online business.
Our ongoing concern is that you have titles to guarantee you a real legal and business monopoly, effectively binding on third parties.
We favor a constructive approach and study all pre-litigation procedures, with legal action being the last resort.
When it comes to defending yourself, we adopt the currently developed principles of interest-based negotiation, based on an understanding of the challenges and objectives of the opponent in order to come to a satisfactory solution for both parties.
Our actions integrate the following missions:
Preparation and submission of argued opposition reports to the different offices
Drafting of formal written notices and negotiations within the framework of counterfeits
Preparation of transactional protocols
Assistance with infringement-seizure procedures
Assistance within the framework of counterfeit actions with our network of lawyers or your own lawyers
Customs authorities
We also work in collaboration with customs authorities within the framework of customs withholding requests, the most effective action to quickly stop counterfeit products from entering a country.
Customs seizures in France increased from 200,000 items intercepted in 1994 to 5.64 million in 2020.
In 2020, the following counterfeit products were seized by customs:
798 000
clothing, shoes and accessories
473 000
games and toys
172 000
electronic, electrical
and computer equipment
128 000
drugs
Source: presentation of the 2021-2022 Counterfeit Plan
The Internet
One of the most effective actions also consists of the content or counterfeit reservations procedure on social networks or search engines.
In the vast majority of cases, these reports lead to rapid removals, two to three days for platforms such as Amazon.
Domain names
Depending on the infringements recorded, we study and recommend possible solutions to prevent them.
Where possible, we negotiate with the counterfeiters.
We represent you within the framework of alternative settlement procedures for disputes involving domain names (arbitration procedure under the WIPO Arbitration Center, SYRELLI procedure vis-à-vis the AFNIC [Association Française pour le Nommage Internet en Coopération – French association tasked with managing the domain name registry in France], extrajudicial procedure before the arbitration courts).
Follow-up
Within the framework of many actions linked to a trademark generating oppositions and formal notices, we summarize them annually so that you can have a factual and objective view of the results of our missions.
This is generally presented in the following form.
For 2019/2020, actions initiated against third parties within the framework of oppositions or formal notices resulted in favorable decisions of more than 95%.
Statistics of trademark defense actions
- Closed cases (won)
- Closed files (lost)
- Files closed without action
- Files under surveillance
- Files in progress
- Closed cases (won)
- Dossiers classés (perdus)
- Dossiers classés sans suites
- Dossiers sous surveillance
- Dossiers en cours
