Patent Law
Energy, telecommunications, digital, IT, medical sector, pharmaceuticals, chemistry, biotechnologies, mechanics, machinery, tools, transport, furniture, etc. Many sectors invest in research and innovation every year. It is essential to ensure the protection of the results of these efforts, in particular through the filing of patents.
Arénaire Avocats’ lawyers advise you and help you define the best strategy for protecting and defending your inventions, innovations, and know-how. Depending on the challenges and needs of your business, we propose concrete and practical solutions to protect you. Our leitmotiv: to establish a relationship of trust, based on transparency, to find the best solutions.
Arénaire Avocats: strategic counsel for the protection and defence of your innovations
Our lawyers assist you in protecting your interests, from the very beginning of your projects, with the drafting and negotiation of collaboration, research and development, and confidentiality agreements.
Arénaire Avocats advises you on the global strategy for protecting your innovations. There are several ways to protect inventions, technical creations, and discoveries: patents, but also utility certificates, supplementary protection certificates, as well as contractual protection of know-how and measures to protect trade secrets.
We work in partnership with patent attorneys, composed of engineers specialised in patents, as well as with experts in the valuation of intangible assets. Our practical and legal approach is combined with their technical expertise, for an A-to-Z support:
- Global protection strategy.
- Implementation of a policy to protect the company’s know-how and trade secrets.
- Patent and know-how exploitation agreements.
- Litigation affecting the validity of patents.
- Infringement and counterfeiting actions.
Arénaire Avocats: drafting and negotiating patent and know-how exploitation agreements
Whether your innovations are protected by patents, utility certificates or know-how, it is important to manage their exploitation. Arénaire Avocats drafts and negotiates all contracts related to your industrial property rights, in particular:
- Collaboration and research & development agreements.
- Confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements.
- Consortium agreements.
- Patent or utility certificate licence agreements.
- Patents and utility certificates transfer agreements.
- Transfer of rights agreements on an invention.
- know-how transfer agreements.
- know-how licensing agreements.
- patent co-ownership agreements.
Patent lawyers: experts in litigation
For each dispute, we define with you a strategy of attack or defence according to your needs, your issues, and your interests. We analyse the risks and chances of success as objectively as possible and we do everything possible to ensure the effective defence of your interests.
Civil Litigation
In France, patents fall under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Paris Court of Justice and Court of Appeal. Located in the 16th arrondissement of the capital and registered with the Paris Bar, Arénaire Avocats represents you in all disputes relating to your patents, utility certificates, know-how and innovations in general.
We intervene at all stages of litigation, both pre-litigation and litigation:
- Cease and desist letters
- Safeguarding evidence of infringement: reports of findings, seizures, etc.
- Requests for provisional bans
- Summary proceedings in urgent or obvious situations
- Patent infringement and unfair competition proceedings
- Actions for patent claims in case of usurpation
- Patent invalidity actions
- Enforcement of judgments
- Negotiations
- Out-of-court settlements
Criminal and customs litigation
Patent infringement is an offence punishable under Articles L.615-14 et seq. of the French Intellectual Property Code. It is also a customs offence which allows the implementation of national and international surveillance.
The lawyers of Arénaire Avocats have a recognised competence in criminal and customs matters for several years. They are the co-authors of the JurisClasseur booklet No. 7531, entitled “Customs and counterfeiting – The powers of customs in the fight against counterfeiting and the procedures initiated following customs intervention”, published in September 2019.
Within the framework of its activity, Arénaire Avocats will assist you in the following missions:
- Setting up customs surveillance: customs declarations for the detention and seizure of counterfeit products, in France and throughout the European Union.
- Assistance in criminal or customs investigations, as well as in the context of judicial information initiated by an investigating judge.
- Assistance and representation before the criminal courts in cases of counterfeiting offences.
Mediation and Arbitration
Depending on the elements of the case, the risks and the chances of success, alternative dispute resolution procedures can be an interesting solution to end disputes. In addition to classical mediation and arbitration procedures, we assist and represent you before the National Commission for Employee Inventions.
Contact our team
Arénaire law firm is at the service of companies and designers based in Paris, in the Ile de France region, but also throughout France and abroad.
Arénaire Avocats: competent in employee inventions
We also assist companies in the management of employee inventions: risk assessment, definition, and implementation of a policy for the management of employee inventions, dispute resolution, negotiations on the amount of compensation due, representation in case of litigation before the National Commission for Employee Inventions (CNIS) and the Court.
Arénaire Avocats regularly intervenes on behalf of employee inventors regarding the determination of additional remuneration or the fair price before the CNIS and, if necessary, before the Court.
Patent law: our know-how to protect and defend our clients’ know-how
We work in a wide range of sectors, for large industrial groups as well as for small companies. We adapt to the constraints and challenges of each of our clients, for 100% personalised assistance. This is why the profiles of our clients and the cases we handle are so varied:
- Counsel and support to a French leader in the field of animal and plant nutrition for the definition and implementation of its employee invention management policy.
- Counselling and assisting a leading French university (in the top 50 of the world’s major research universities) in the protection of innovations related to algorithms.
- Counselling and representing a leading French pharmaceutical and dermo-cosmetic group in a dispute with a partner regarding the exploitation of research results.
- Counsel and representative of a French SME specialising in garden furniture in a dispute with a Chinese giant in the sector concerning the protection of a garden furniture by a patent.
- Counsel and representation of an employee inventor in a dispute with his former employer before the National Commission for Employee Inventions (CNIS) regarding a series of patents of exceptional economic value.
- Counselling and representing a European leader in the decoration and furnishing sector in Europe in a patent dispute relating to wall hanging systems.
- Counselling and representing a co-inventor in an action for the valuation of the share of a patent filed in the medical field.
- Counsel to employee inventors in the context of claims and/or fair price payment actions against multinationals.
- Counsel and representation of an inventor in an infringement dispute against a major industrial group in the chemical sector.
- Counsel to a leading company in the construction industry in the context of the drafting of a consortium agreement.
- Counsel to a French importer in the field of toys in a dispute involving the assessment of the validity of three-dimensional trademarks with regard to previously registered patents.
- Counsel to an inventor, holder of a co-owned patent, in the context of a mediation.
Do you need legal counsel on an innovation? Are you wondering about the patentability of an invention? Do you want to set up agreements for the exploitation of your patents? Or are you looking for an expert patent lawyer to represent you in a dispute? Contact us! We will take the time to discuss your needs and how we can assist you.