How do you accelerate the protection of your intellectual property?

Does your business need an IP strategy?

An appropriate strategy for the protection of your intellectual property potentially cuts costs, increases efficiency and mitigates risks at the same time. By combining our global know-how and local expertise, we help you to compile the IP strategy, which best fits to your business, and reap the following benefits:

 • Discover: Through the mapping of your IP portfolio, we help you put such assets back to your production cycle, improve your IP management, document your rights and, in overall, make your business more valuable for investors.

• Protect: By means of our services your IP rights will be protected throughout their life-cycle, i.e. from the stages of their inception or acquisition and registration up to the stage of their transfer of ownership or expiration.

• Manage: Your IP strategy designed by our dedicated team will efficiently deal not only with day-to-day risk monitoring but also with more general issues related to licensing, distribution and antitrust.

• Share/Collaborate: Nowadays, intelligent enterprises outpace competition through innovation, platform practices, alliances and IP ecosystems. With our toptier legal advice and support in IP licensing, sharing and pooling schemes you will be able to compile your intelligent business strategy.

• Monetise/Commercialise: Digitalisation disrupts and transforms IP strategies. Our team of lawyers can assist you in safely navigating your IP monetization schemes through legal and regulatory challenges.

• Reduce costs: The organizational measures accompanying an IP strategy include standardized rules for the management of intangible assets across your organization and, thus, reduce your management costs.

Which assets are taken into account in your IP strategy?

We offer IP legal support of your business across all categories of IP rights, including the following:

• Copyright: Our IP legal services provide you with the tools to identify, make visible, manage, license and protect your copyrighted works in an appropriate manner.

• Trademarks: We offer legal advice on how to brand your products/services, to correspond to ‘first-to-file’ rules and to be proactive in the protection of your distinctive marks.

• Patents: Our services span from expert legal advice on patentability to patent registration and licensing of your innovations.

• Designs: Depending on the nature of your business, our services for the registration, protection and licensing of your products as designs may make real difference in your profitability.

• Databases: By utilizing our advanced know-how on the management of your data as an asset, you will be able to design and implement the rules of governing and monetizing your databases, which best correspond to your business.

• Trade secrets & know-how: By means of our IP Strategy tool, we identify, manage and protect the trade secrets know-how of your company, also offering legal services in their commercialization through licensing and technology-transfer agreements.

• Domain names: We provide legal advice and support concerning all types of domain name disputes confronted by your business.

• Anti-counterfeiting: We support your company to adopt precautionary measures, resort to civil and criminal law actions and engage in custom enforcement procedures.

How do you design your intellectual property strategy?

Combining our global know-how and on-the-field experience, we help you to design and implement the IP strategy of your business though our step-by-step process described below:

• Identify intangible assets: As a necessary first step, we help you to seek and recognize the intangible assets controlled by your company and chart the fields of innovation and areas of potential risk of your business.

• Create and maintain your IP inventory: Following the stage of identification, we support you in documenting and maintaining your IP portfolio in a relevant corporate inventory of intellectual property rights, which ensures their adequate protection and leverages the value of your business.

• Choose methods of protection: Different types of IPRs qualify for different kinds of protection (legal, organisational and technical), whereas many IRPs are subject to registration. Within the framework of devising your IP strategy, our team of lawyers provides expert advice on the best way to protect each of your IP assets and your IP portfolio as a whole.

• Manage your IP portfolio: The adequate management of intellectual property invests on both protection and valorization. In this context, we improve your ability to monitor and identify infringers. At the same time, we support the design of appropriate strategies for the licensing of your IPR portfolio. We also conduct due diligence of third-party IRPs licensed by your company. Finally, our team of lawyers provide top-quality legal services in the drafting and negotiation of the relevant licensing contracts.

• Allocate IPRs and observe Tax Regimes: Allocation of IPRs within your group of companies raises financial, legal and tax issues. Our integrated team of lawyers and tax accountants supports you in appropriately allocating your IPRs across your group according to your business needs in an insolvency resistant manner, while also observing tax regimes;

• Have in place an IPR infringement management action plan: Taking into account the nature of your IP portfolio and the types and extent of your business, we set out an action plan in the event of infringement of your IPRs.

• Organize your business and train your R&D personnel: Our team provides assistance in identifying your key R&D teams, preparing corporate IP policies for the appropriate management of your IPRs by your personnel. We also offer training of your executives and employees, so as to raise their awareness on IP issues arising in the context of their job role.

What are our IP strategy services in detail?

Legal measures of protection

• Documentation & registration

• IPRs and confidentiality provisions in employment contracts

• Employee non-compete agreements

• Intra-Group IP Transfer/Licensing agreements

• Appropriate IP Transfer/Licensing provisionsin contracts with partners

• Strategic IPR pools and licensing regimes with multiple partners

• Provisions for the appropriate management of copyleft assets

• Non-Disclosure and confidentiality agreements with third parties

• Adequate liability and penalty clauses

• Protective Provisions in online terms and conditions

• Anti-Counterfeiting measures

• Anti-Circumvention strategies

• Arbitration and litigation strategies

Inventory per IPR yype

• Intellectual property right

• Nature of right (ownership/license)

• Date of establishment

• Types of protection

• Importance/Value

• Internal access and use

• Place of storage/use

• Licensing to third parties

Organisational measures of protection

• Risk Management policies

• Storage, access and usage policies

• Employee IT use policies

• Training

Physical measures of protection

• Minimisation of hard-copy archives

• Lock-And-Key measures

• Paper shredders

• Physical archive retention and destruction policies

Technical measures of protection

• Back-ups and disaster recovery plan

• Anti-Virus and firewalls

• Data classification and database separation

• Authentication, log-files and user rights classification

• Encryption

• Technological protection measures

IPR Infringement Action Plan

• Information security incident register

• IPR infringement risk assessment

• Information security incident management procedure

• IPR infringement management plan (Investigation, Evidence, Mitigation, Litigation)

What are our IP service packages for SMEs?

Taking advantage of our experience and expertise, we are in the position to offer well-designed IP service packages that cover the needs of start-ups and small and medium enterprises for the appropriate management and protection of their IPRs. Such service packages include:

• IP registration

• IP portfolio management

• IP contracts

• Legal advice and support

• IP litigation

Why to choose EY Law?

Platis – Anastassiadis & Associates Law Partnership, EY Law Greece, has a dedicated local team of IP lawyers, that operates as part of the wider EY Law network of IP experts active in 80+ jurisdictions, including all the member-states of the European Union. We are thus in the position to offer

intellectual property-related services with the following outstanding values:

• Technical, Tax and Law one-stop-shop services

• Expert and in-depth knowledge

• Global/Local know-how

• Profound experience in IP Due Diligence, M&As and corporate transactions

• Integrated teams

• EY Law global network outreach