Many businesses will experience that a competitor or others have suddenly got the same idea as you. Or maybe even worse: Has directly copied your effort and used it as if it were their own.
Of course, the roles are sometimes reversed: The new student assistant has shined up the company’s website, and suddenly a “threat letter” with accusations of illegal copying and an excessive demand for compensation and remuneration arrives in your inbox.
Often, however, the reality is not so simple. Who holds the copyright here? Had we not been given permission? Is that text even copyright protected? Is it even my responsibility?
In any case, you may need a lawyer to guide you safely through the process, and we are ready to help you.
What is copyright?
Copyright covers such diverse things as texts, images, architecture, software, audio, and video. Copyright comes into existence by itself, and it is the persons who have created the works in question who hold the copyright.
Design rights are kind of a little brother to copyright with threads to trademark law. Design protection protects the physical appearance of your product and can be achieved through actual implementation and/or registration. By registering your design, you can achieve a greater degree of certainty that a design is protected and belongs to you.
A registered EU design is valid for five years and can be renewed for new 5-year periods up to a total of 25 years. An unregistered EU design is valid for three years from publication and is non-renewable. If you want to protect your design, it must be done no later than one year from the first publication.
Advice from skilled lawyers
Our lawyers at Advokatgruppen are ready to help you when you want your design registered, if others have misused your design, or if you are accused of getting too close to other people’s designs. We have offices in Horsens, Fredericia and Aarhus, but service clients throughout Denmark. We have been advising since 1987, and we believe that law should be straightforward. Contact us – we are happy to have a non-binding and free introductory conversation.