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Intellectual Property

Ideas and innovation are the creative potential of a successful business. This intellectual potential becomes a measurable enterprise value when expressed in property rights (e.g. patents, utility patents and copyright) or monetised through licences. Legally watertight advertising campaigns, press materials that are beyond reproach and careful media usage also make a quantifiable contribution to business success.

What others say about us

"CMS has one of the best IP teams in the business."
 (Law firms in Germany)

"The team offers good know-how, experience, value for money and excellent client services."
 (Chambers Guide)

"Clients say that 'nothing compares with' CMS's practice."
 (Legal 500, 2013)

Experience and expertise whenever you need us

CMS assists both SMEs and international corporations to optimise their intellectual property rights and assert them effectively. More than 70 specialised IP lawyers provide tailored advice that is designed to achieve results. Thanks to their experience from practice, teaching and research, they are always familiar with the latest developments across all areas of intellectual property.

Unlike most other areas of law, intellectual property is repeatedly affected by new legislative proposals at a national and international level. Accordingly, our lawyers are widely represented in professional associations and expert committees that deal with these developments and provide expert comment.

Our expertise

CMS – presence in Europe

In European countries outside Germany, the international CMS network provides CMS with access to specialists to advise on your claims out-of-court and enforce them in court. We take over the coordination of parallel infringement cases in various countries.

Key markets and industries

Our experienced team successfully advises companies from every sector, including:

  • Automotive
  • Entertainment
  • TV
  • Internet and new media
  • Cosmetics industry
  • Retail
  • Engineering
  • Medical technology
  • Pharmaceuticals and food
  • Sport
  • Press and publishing
  • Advertising and marketing  
Know-how Protection

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Grenzbeschlagnahme
Border Seizure
Border seizure is an effective and low-cost method of combating counterfeit goods and illegal parallel imports.A simple yet effective procedureWe lodg
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Wettbewerbsrecht
Competition Law (Unfair Competition Act – UWG)
The experts at CMS Germany can advise you on all competition-related issues, such asrunning advertising and marketing campaignsthe design of websites
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Urheberrecht
Copyright
Copyright plays a key role in the exploitation of creative achievements, both offline and online. A current focus is the development of new business m
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Designrecht
Design Law
Design adds value to products and makes them stand out from the crowd. As a cornerstone of your success in business, your design needs to be defended
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Gewerblicher Rechtsschutz - Gerichtliche und außergerichtliche Vertretung
In-Court and Out-of-Court Representation
CMS is one of Germany’s leading law firms when it comes to acquiring and defending intellectual property rights. We represent our clients before the c
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Patent und Gebrauchsmusterrecht
Patent and Utility Patent Law
CMS Germany has an effective and experienced team of patent and utility patent specialists. Where issues are particularly complex, we work closely wit
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Markenrecht
Trademark Law
We provide support for creating, defending and commercialising your designation rights.Trademarks are of major importance for a company’s value and co
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06/12/2019
Art Law
Safe­guard­ing as­sets Col­lect­ing art sat­is­fies the de­sire to cre­ate something last­ing and pre­serve our cul­tur­al her­it­age. Such cul­tur­al and fin­an­cial as­sets re­quire cor­res­pond­ing pro­tec­tion. We provide...
Publication
28/09/2020
Pro­tect­ing your IP rights in a chan­ging world
The pan­dem­ic that will define 2020 has put many types of in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­erty in the spot­light –par­tic­u­larly, of course, in life sci­ences. Who will de­vel­op an ef­fect­ive vac­cine or vac­cines for Cov­id-19...
Publication

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01/12/2022
Ex­pan­sion of mar­ket po­s­i­tion: In­ter­na­tion­al CMS team ad­vises Kan­sai He­lios...
Co­logne – Glob­al paint and coat­ings pro­du­cer Kan­sai He­lios has ac­quired all the shares in CWS Lack­fab­rik GmbH (CWS), a spe­cial­ist in powder coat­ings and syn­thet­ic res­ins. The deal in­cludes the group...
Deals
23/11/2022
Ex­pan­sion strategy: CMS ad­vises NORD Hold­ing on ex­pand­ing Pub­lic Cloud...
Co­logne – The Pub­lic Cloud Group has ex­pan­ded its port­fo­lio of ser­vices by ac­quir­ing Erd­ing-based SAP spe­cial­ist LNW-Soft. The ac­quis­i­tion will en­able the multi-cloud ser­vice pro­vider to mi­grate its...
News
22/11/2022
Glob­al Life Sci­ences & Health­care For­um 2022: Life Sci­ences are reap­ing...
Di­git­al trans­form­a­tion in life sci­ences is cre­at­ing op­por­tun­it­ies to counter health­care’s most in­tract­able prob­lems from treat­ing rare dis­eases to ac­cel­er­at­ing dia­gnostics and re­du­cing treat­ment back­logs...
Law-Now Life Sciences & Healthcare
16/11/2022
Com­pre­hens­ive ad­vice on se­cur­ing en­ergy sup­ply in Ger­many
Ham­burg/Stut­tgart – Strug­gling gas com­pany Se­cur­ing En­ergy for Europe (SEFE) has been trans­ferred to the own­er­ship of the Fed­er­al Re­pub­lic of Ger­many in or­der to se­cure Ger­man gas sup­plies. SEFE is...
Deals
15/11/2022
Déjà vu for Louis Vuit­ton’s Dam­i­er Azur pat­tern?
In­tro­duc­tion It could be ar­gued that the ma­jor­ity of con­sumers would re­cog­nise the in­fam­ous Dam­i­er Azur pat­tern be­long­ing to French lux­ury fash­ion house, Louis Vuit­ton Mal­leti­er (Louis Vuit­ton). Pre­vi­ous...
Law-Now Intellectual Property
09/11/2022
Key points pa­per of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment on can­nabis leg­al­iz­a­tion
It's get­ting more con­crete: The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment sets out key points for the planned leg­al­iz­a­tion of re­cre­ation­al can­nabis In the co­ali­tion agree­ment, the co­ali­tion parties agreed to al­low "con­trolled...
Law-Now Life Sciences & Healthcare
24/11/2022
Anti-coun­ter­feit­ing meas­ures for product pro­tec­tion us­ing block­chain tech­no­logy
We­bin­ar Series Block­chain and IP
Event Webinar
08/11/2022
Tech­no­logy Trans­form­a­tion – Me­dia
The me­dia sec­tor is known to be highly com­pet­it­ive, with that com­pet­i­tion driv­ing in­nov­a­tion. Older me­dia busi­nesses have had to grapple with dis­rupt­ive new entrants. And those new entrants are con­stantly work­ing to de­liv­er bet­ter and more en­ga­ging con­tent and user ex­per­i­ences to main­tain their ad­vant­age. Di­git­isa­tion has changed how me­dia com­pan­ies in­ter­act with their audi­ence in ways we could not have ima­gined just a few years ago, but this comes with risk.This re­port is a deep dive in­to the data first pro­duced for the re­port Tech­no­logy Trans­form­a­tion: Man­aging Risks in a Chan­ging Land­scape. This saw over 500 cor­por­ate coun­sel and risk man­agers sur­veyed from mul­tiple in­dus­tries across the world. Here we look in de­tail at the 75 re­spond­ents from the me­dia sec­tor, and their per­spect­ives on the risks as­so­ci­ated with busi­ness-crit­ic­al tech­no­lo­gies, in­clud­ing emer­ging tech­no­lo­gies. What did we find? Me­dia is a dy­nam­ic sec­tor and can be an early ad­op­ter of many nov­el tech­no­lo­gies as com­pan­ies push for com­pet­it­ive ad­vant­ages to cre­ate and sat­is­fy cus­tom­er de­mand. As we look to the fu­ture, the sec­tor does seem un­der­prepared in some areas, which is a po­ten­tial cause for con­cern.Down­load the Tech­no­logy Trans­form­a­tion me­dia sec­tor re­port now to read aboutThe prin­cip­al drivers in the ad­op­tion of busi­ness-crit­ic­al tech­no­logy in the me­dia sec­tor­Con­fid­ence in man­aging tech-re­lated risks among seni­or me­dia ex­ec­ut­ivesFu­ture threats from new tech­no­lo­gies like AI and block­chain­Which plans and pro­cesses me­dia com­pan­ies are put­ting in place to pro­tect tech in­fra­struc­ture­Cul­tur­al bar­ri­ers to man­aging tech risks in the me­dia sec­tor­Preferred ap­proaches to dis­pute res­ol­u­tion in the me­dia sec­tor
Publication
04/11/2022
Ar­bit­ra­tion of FRAND dis­putes
UK Court of Ap­peal gives strongest steer yet for set­tling FRAND dis­putes via ar­bit­ra­tion Last week, the Court of Ap­peal handed down its judge­ment in Optis, in which it was asked to opine on the avail­ab­il­ity...
Law-Now Dispute Resolution
03/11/2022
5 things you need to know about the DSA in less than 10 minutes!
Oc­to­ber fin­ished with the long-awaited ad­op­tion and pub­lic­a­tion (on the 27th) of the Di­git­al Ser­vices Act (DSA). Al­low us to de­mys­ti­fy the key points of the DSA for you. The DSA is a new leg­al frame­work...
Law-Now Digital Regulation
19/10/2022
Di­or Saddle Bag – icon­ic fash­ion state­ment or just an­oth­er bag?
In the latest in­stal­ment of the fash­ion in­dustry’s at­tempts to re­gister three-di­men­sion­al trade marks, Chris­ti­an Di­or Cou­ture has al­most en­tirely failed to se­cure trade mark pro­tec­tion for the shape...
Law-Now Intellectual Property
29/09/2022
CMS ad­vises Volk­swa­gen on joint ven­ture with Umi­core to pro­duce cath­ode...
Ham­burg – PowerCo, the new bat­tery com­pany set up by the Volk­swa­gen Group, and Bel­gian ma­ter­i­als tech­no­logy group Umi­core have signed an agree­ment on a joint ven­ture to pro­duce cath­ode ma­ter­i­al for...
Deals
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