Numatic International Limited

Numatic is an engineering-led company which is recognised not just for its robust and reliable products, but also for a continual stream of innovations. We help them use the intellectual property system to maintain their competitive advantage.

Patents
Numatic’s product design changes may be incremental, consisting of improvements and refinements to existing products, or step-changes in the form of new models to serve a new market segment. We work closely with the engineering design team to assess patentable developments at an early stage. This involves visiting our client, reviewing CAD models and examining prototypes. Some of the most demanding work arises out of the introduction of a complex new model, such as the Twintec Vario ride-on floor scrubber where several commercially important innovations were identified and protected in UK and international patent applications prior to launch.

Trade Marks
Numatic’s product range also includes the iconic HENRY and HETTY vacuum cleaners, with their well-known ‘bowler hat’ top and smiley face and their family products GEORGE, JAMES and CHARLES. In addition to protecting the individual brand names in a number of jurisdictions, we have also obtained trade mark protection for various elements of HENRY’s get up and shape.

Our client was recently faced with fighting protracted cross-oppositions with a major US retailer over one of its brands. We took the strategic step of commencing invalidity proceedings against the retailer's registered trade marks to increase our client's leverage in negotiations. This resulted in a swift settlement of the dispute to our client's satisfaction and saved them considerable costs.

Designs
Our client is constantly innovating and developing new products and has also obtained registered design protection for the appearance of a number of its new products and their get up.