10 – Design rights

Background

EasySit is a company selling furniture. They have designed a new range of furniture that has a distinctive style. They are market leaders and they know that whatever they bring out will be copied within 6 to 12 months.

They would like to protect their business by some form of intellectual property. They have been advised to file for patent protection.

The problem

Their new designs include particular shapes, material textures and colour schemes that match between chairs, cupboards, tables, settees, lamps, etc. There is a range of colours and textures available. Impressed by the way that car manufacturers sell different interiors of cars using “just-in-time” manufacturing methods they want to introduce a new business model which allows the customer to select particular combinations of colours, materials and textures. These are then made to order and shipped within a target of three weeks. To achieve this requires dedicated software at each distributor’s sales location where the selected designs are input into a computer. The selected designs are transferred electronically to a central location where they are converted into manufacturing plans automatically including the amount and type of materials required and a scheduling of production. Any shortfalls or delays are identified automatically and flagged to an escalation level for individual treatment.

To assist the customers in selecting the designs, software has been developed to show how the new furniture will look in a setting that is like the customer’s own premises. The customer sends a set of digital photographs of their living area to the distributor’s location by email and these are used to construct images of how the new furniture will look when in place. Special software identifies matching objects in the 2D pictures to generate a 3D image of the living space. Then 3D images of the furniture can be loaded into the scene, manipulated and viewed. A variety of lighting schemes can be selected.

The challenge

  • How can EasySit protect its potential new designs – by patents or by designs rights or by both?
  • Can it patent its new business model?
  • Can it patent its new customer friendly viewing software?
  • In which countries should it consider filing for IP protection?

The solution

If these are the kind of problems that you have, please contact BIRD GOËN by email (ipadmin@birdgoen.com) and refer to “case study 10” to arrange for consultation.