NL Patent Office

Patent, trademark or design?

How do you protect your invention? How do you protect the new name that you have devised for your product? Or the book that you have published about your new invention? Dutch law offers you various options to achieve this.

Legislation provides legal protection for inventions and innovations. Thanks to intellectual property, you can actually turn your new, inventive product or idea into your own property. Intellectual property is the right to be the only party that may reap the benefits of an intellectual accomplishment. No other parties shall be permitted to simply adopt an idea or a design, but others may glean inspiration from the published information available to the public about existing, protected products when developing a new product of their own. Symbols are often used to indicate the type of protection.

 Intellectual Property rights
 

Copyright		For works of literature, ard and science
Industrial Property Rights	Patent law	For new products or processes
	Trademark law	For word trademarks and pictorial trademarks
	Designs and models law	For the exterior of an implement
	Plant breeder's right	For crops
	Topographies of semiconductor products	For 'chips'

Legislation and regulations

The legal validity of patents is based upon various national acts and international treaties.
 

National	Patent Act 1995 and the amendments with effect of 5 June 2008	Patent legislation for the Netherlands
	Supplementary Protection Certificates (SPC)	Specifically for medicines and crop protection
European	European Patent Convention	Basis for the European patent
Global	PCT Treaty	Proceed through part of the worldwide application procedure
	TRIPS	Global trade agreement
	Other treaties	Minimum requirement for IP protection