INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

Our highly skilled attorneys have gained acclaimed expertise in all areas of intellectual property and unfair competition, protecting your value in matters involving patents, trademarks, copyright and related rights, and designs. 

Our firm serves a breadth of companies – from start-ups to multinationals – and individuals – whether they are inventors, authors, artists or beneficiaries – in the management, protection and exploitation of their rights in Switzerland and abroad. We also provide expert assistance to draft and negotiate IP contracts.

We advise a wide range of Swiss and international clients in the pre-litigation phase and robustly represent their interests in the state administrative system, before civil, criminal and administrative state courts, and before arbitration tribunals.

Clients seek our representation in judicial and arbitral matters, including:

• Actions in infringement and declaration of invalidity involving trademarks, patents, designs, copyright, company names and other naming issues
• Disputes relating to know-how, trade secrets, unfair competition, copyright and domain names
• Contractual disputes, including licenses, R&D, franchises, technology transfers, distribution and joint ventures.

Our firm offers assistance in the following fields:

• Filings and intellectual property portfolio management (trademarks, designs)
• Reviewing, drafting and negotiating contracts (licences, assignments, publishing, franchises, agencies, distribution, non-competition clauses, production, work commissioning, copyright exploitation, co-production, options, sponsoring)
• Performing legal due diligence in intellectual property matters and preparing related reports
• Reviewing, drafting and negotiating contracts for new technologies and R&D (licences, joint ventures, know-how, technology transfer, R&D)
• Implementation and follow-up of oversight by the Swiss Federal Customs Administration
• Unfair competition (parasitism, disparagement, violation of trade or business secrets)
• Media, sponsorships and advertising (image rights)
• Setting up and acquiring companies that own or exploit intellectual property rights
• Managing portfolios of licence and assignment agreements involving copyrights and related rights
• Interacting with management organisations for copyrights and related rights