Design Searching

Do I Need A Search?

Our search service can help you to work out whether your design is new, prior to seeking protection for it around the world. We can also help you to locate registered designs that may threaten your freedom to operate, and published designs that predate, and can be used to challenge the validity of, registrations that may be blocking you.

Our Services

All of our searches are conducted by, or under the supervision of, an experienced patent attorney who is also a professional searcher, and we ensure that the search is conducted by someone with appropriate technical background in the field of the design.

Our team can assist with:

Prior art searches and analysis

Prior art is published information that may affect the validity of a registered design. To evaluate whether a proposed design is registrable, a novelty search can be conducted to identify potentially relevant prior art. If it is the strength of a design registration that is under review, then a validity search will assist in making the assessment. A validity search may be advisable as part of pre-litigation due diligence if you intend to enforce your rights against an infringer.

Freedom to operate searches and analysis

Freedom to operate searches and analysis can help organizations in a number of ways. The knowledge obtained from a design infringement search can help guide product development to ensure that new products being brought to market will not infringe registrations owned by competitors.

A design infringement risk search will identify in-force registrations that may block a product launch.

We can also help you to locate rights that are held in the names of your competitors.