Before proceeding down the track of seeking registered protection or entering an overseas market, we recommend always ‘looking before you leap’.

We have access to, and knowledge of, specialist IP databases, and expertise in conducting searches both in New Zealand and overseas.

Pre-filing and ‘freedom to operate’ searches are an essential tool for assessing not only whether you can obtain a registration for your new innovation or brand, but more importantly, whether you will infringe another’s IP.  Searching now will save you both time and money in the long term.

Patent Searching & Pre-Filing Assessment 

For new inventions we will investigate if any similar ‘prior art’ (such as designs, patents or general publications) exist in New Zealand and your key markets, before establishing your ‘freedom to operate’ in these markets having regard to what is already there, as well as the patentability and registrability of your new innovations.

Trade Mark Searching & Pre-Filing Assessment

Before adopting a new trade mark or logo, it is critically important to conduct a search to ensure that your use of the new tradevmark or logo will not infringe the rights of any other traders. While you may be aware of trade marks used in direct competition to you, there are thousands of trade mark registrations that may inadvertently be infringed by your use of the new tradevmark.

CreateIP can conduct a search of the New Zealand Trade Marks Register and various sources of unregistered trade marks – such as the Companies Office and domain name registries – to see if any other traders are using the same or similar trademark.  Corresponding searches can also be conducted in the overseas markets in which you intend to provide your goods or services.

As part of our service when conducting such a search, we will also provide you with our opinion as to the registrability of your proposed trade mark.

Watching Searches

We can also keep a close eye out on your competitors’ activities.  Our experience shows that these searches are useful when commercialising new products as they alert you to competitors’ activity and also new technologies that may be used to make your product even more successful

We can conduct ‘watching searches’ of the various Patent and Trade Mark Registers to check on new innovations and the status of patents of interest to your business, as well as potentially infringing trade marks, or trade mark applications lodged by your competitors.