Trademarks are the collective term for your company's business identifiers, which can take many different forms. Traditional trademarks are word marks (the name of the trademark itself) and figurative marks (e.g., logos), but it is also possible to register a number of other types of business characteristics such as sounds, movements, shapes, and multimedia (e.g., an animation of a logo).
Use and registration confer exclusive rights to use the trademark. A trademark registration is valid for 10 years from the date of application and must therefore be renewed every 10 years.
We can help you with all the legal aspects of trademark registration, including registration, ongoing monitoring, and any prosecution of infringements.
If you would like to know more about trademarks, please contact Niels Schou-Andreasen.
Patents protect technologies and products and are often crucial for companies that base their business on specific technologies and products. A patent can secure a company's investments in areas such as development and research.
If you would like to know more about patents, please contact Niels Schou-Andreasen.
Copyright is the most basic protection you can obtain and forms the basis for almost all protection. Images, videos, music, sounds, and, not least, software are protected. To obtain copyright protection, a number of conditions must be met. The product must be original, which means that it must be the result of the author's personal and independent creative effort. The product must also be characterized as a "work."
It is neither necessary nor possible to register copyright in Denmark in order to enjoy protection.
CO:PLAY provides advice on and enforcement of copyright and ensures that your activities do not infringe on the copyrights of others.
If you would like to know more about copyright, please contact Niels Schou-Andreasen.
Internet domains have evolved into valuable and essential rights that need to be protected. The value of a domain can be enormous, which is why it's not uncommon for disputes over internet domains to arise. This can happen, for example, when a person buys a domain containing a company's trademark, and the person subsequently tries to sell the domain to the company at a high price, or when a person buys a domain name to harm a company.
CO:PLAY provides advice on domain disputes, including in the Complaints Board for Domain Names (regarding the .dk top-level domain) and international domains based on ICANN's rules.
If you want to know more about domain disputes, please contact Michael Brandt.
Your company's brand, products, look and feel, etc. are protected by marketing legislation, and your competitors are not allowed to imitate or freeload on your efforts. Your protection arises from the efforts you have made, and the principle behind the rules is that everyone must make their own efforts and not free-ride on the efforts of others. The protection grows with your efforts, and the interest in imitation typically arises when a major effort and investment leads to success. Here, it is important to enforce your rights so that your efforts and investments are not undermined by others' imitations. We advise on all aspects of marketing law and have extensive experience in enforcing companies' marketing law protection.
If you would like to know more about good marketing practices, please contact Niels Schou-Andreasen.
Is your company doing enough to protect its trade secrets?
Since 2018, companies that want protection for their trade secrets have been required to take appropriate measures to protect them. One way to protect trade secrets could be, for example, to ensure that employees who have knowledge of the trade secrets are subject to a duty of confidentiality, and that partners and others to whom the company grants access to trade secrets only gain access once they have entered into a non-disclosure agreement (NDA).
Trade secrets can be any kind of information about the company's products, services, methods, or other things that have independent economic value and are not known to the outside world, i.e., are secret.
If you need to know more about protecting your trade secrets or if someone has misused your trade secrets, please contact Niels Schou-Andreasen.
