AWA is a leading IP firm with over 370 employees across 22 offices in Belgium, China, Denmark, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.
We believe tomorrow is today’s emerging business – rising up from untapped potential within established industries and start-ups. No matter the size or industry, we help our clients create business out of their ideas and innovations.
AWA was founded in 1897 by Swedish engineer Anders Wilhelm Anderson. His initials form our company name and remind us of our proud history.
We supply a full-service offering of IP law services in prosecution, dispute litigation, aftermarket services, legal advice, strategy and commercialisation. Our IP professionals are experts in patents, trademark, design, copyright and domain names.
What sets up apart
Global: AWA has a presence in Europe and Asia with an extensive network of qualified preferred partners all over the world. We can handle your IP needs globally and follow-up in real-time.
Diversity and Colloboration: Our people come from diverse backgrounds with practical industry knowledge. Their technical capability means they understand the small details and how this differentiates you in the marketplace. Our teams comprise engineers working closely with attorneys at law and vice versa. This seamless collaboration ensures that the right skillset and legal knowledge is available and utilised for our client’s innovations. We pride ourselves on our comprehensive trainee programme for future IP leaders.
Strategy: We focus on the long-term – building a business is a journey that requires strategy. We support companies throughout the corporate cycle to protect and enforce IP rights, but to also identify and capture the value of intellectual assets.
Digital Innovation: We live in the digital era and are constantly looking at tools that reduce workload and save time. From the AWA Client Porta, to our domain management services – we are innovating the IP tools of the future.
Employee Owned: AWA is 100% owned by the employees with more than 50% of us choosing to invest or hold shares in the Group. This reflects our personal and long-term commitment to both our firm and our clients.
AWA Asia
Part of the AWA Group, AWA Asia supports and manages international clients’ IP needs throughout the region with a head office in Hong Kong – a location known for its successful business environment, world-class infrastructure and effective legal system.
Our Beijing office is our wholly owned licensed trademark agency, allowing us to file and enforce trademarks directlybefore the China Trademark Office and the administrative authorities, without the need to use local third-party agents.
Today, China is one of the largest IP markets in the world and is increasingly being selected as a key venue for IP litigation by foreign and local entities alike.
AWA Asia has strong value proposition that consists of an East-meets-West approach, with a bilingual and bicultural team of IP professionals (trademark lawyers, patent attorneys and IP strategists). Our international-level service delivery comes with deep local knowledge and is business minded, pragmatic and tailored.
Network memberships: AIPPI, APAA, ECTA, epi, FICPI, INTA, The Lawyer Network, LES Scandinavia, MARQUES, Union-IP
"Giants within the little world of IP”
Established in 1898, GEVERS Group has a long heritage of outstanding services in the field of intellectual property. Its leading reputation is based on many examples of innovative and forward thinking.
Managing member of the GEVERS family have often been described as “leaders and not followers, innovators and not imitators, giants within the little world of IP”.
At many key stages of its history, a GEVERS family member has been behind important breakthroughs in our profession.
An innovative ingenuity is what can best describe the generations that succeeded each other.
We are proud to have contributed to several major breakthroughs in our profession, and to have helped improve the high quality services to which each of our clients is entitled.
History
In 1966, Ernest T. Freylinger laid the foundations of our present industrial property consulting office in Luxembourg.
With the help of his wife who wrote letters on a typewriter, Ernest T. Freylinger prospected in Luxembourg and all around the world trying to convince many companies about the importance of protecting their intellectual assets.
Over the following years, Ernest T. Freylinger managed to gain the confidence of important clients in Luxembourg and created business partnerships with other IP offices, mainly in Luxembourg and in Belgium.
These collaborations allowed the office to expand its services on an international basis. Office Freylinger has continued to grow and now relies on a wide range of national and international clients, from the corner shopkeeper up to the multinational company.
At the turn of the century, the rejuvenation of the staff, new openings in the fields of industrial property as well as a constant improvement and variety of the provided services have contributed to place Office Freylinger as the main and largest Luxembourg IP Office.
Values
We assist our clients in developing adequate Intellectual Property strategies to help them in acquiring and expanding strong market positions.
Our core values are: SECURITY, PLEASURE and CREATIVITY.
We provide tailor-made services to vigorously protect our client’s rights and interests. We strongly rely on our highly qualified and motivated IP attorneys and paralegals to provide high quality work for our clients.
Quality
Having been involved in numerous opposition/appeal proceedings and infringement cases, we know how important it is to carefully draft and amend intellectual property right applications during their prosecution.
Our philosophy is that IP rights are commercial tools, which must be able to furnish a return on investment. This return on investment can be achieved by capitalising on a monopoly, by giving licences to competitors and/or by enforcing patent rights against infringers. All these actions are only possible if the rights are carefully drafted.
Quality control
Having numerous direct clients requiring our services, the quality of our services is one of our most important assets. Quality generates trust from our clients and trust is the most essential requirement in our profession.
Confidentiality
Each employee is bound by the provisions of the Luxembourg law and has a strict confidentiality clause in his or her employment contract. The fact that the confidentiality of our work and of the information given to us by our clients is a crucial factor is regularly reminded to the team.
Optimizing expenses
Optimizing expenses is a permanent concern. Therefore, as from the early beginnings of our work, we keep a close eye on expenses affecting our clients.
Our ability to directly act before many national Patent and Trademark offices in Europe allows us to minimise the costs to the client for numerous actions performed before these offices.
For providing services in the rest of the World, we rely on a broad network of confirmed foreign associates, which are respected members of the various professional organisations. Our clients benefit from our transparency in cost matters as well as from our reasonable rates.
Over the last century we’ve been lucky enough to have played a part in protecting some of the world’s most ground-breaking inventions and high profile brands. You can trust us to know IP law inside out, to be curious, and to connect the dots to reach solutions others don’t.
We will provide you with a team, rich in real-world experience, comprising experts who have worked at the forefront of pioneering technologies. A substantial number of our lawyers hold qualifications in scientific or technical fields, meaning we are often called upon for our specialist knowledge and insight on large international mandates. We are respected for our creative and original solutions.
We offer both litigation and transactional support in relation to all IP rights, from small innovative projects to the largest, most complex and ground-breaking transactions and disputes.
Our approach has always been centred on client service, collaborating and innovating with our clients to create bespoke solutions that make their lives easier. This includes: our 'twobirds Pattern' product, a proprietary, in-house patent valuation and analysis tool, that allows us to landscape, analyse, and value patent portfolios in an automated and sophisticated way; and our innovative and dynamic Brand Protection Reporting Portal, which uses dynamic charts that give clients an up-to-date overview of their risk profile at any given time.
Talk to us to find out how our tools, experience and our genuine passion for IP can help you devise a strategy that will help to maintain your competitive edge, whilst protecting and optimising your IP in the best way possible.
Internationally Bird & Bird has over 400 IP lawyers, attorneys and legal professionals across our 29 offices, many of whom have known each other and worked together for years, meaning we're all on the same page and offer consistency and quality that runs through all levels of seniority. We are therefore ideally placed to devise and coordinate multi-jurisdictional litigation strategies and,in the future, to represent clients before the Unified Patent Court.
Office Locations: Australia, Belgium, China, Czech Republic & Slovakia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates and United States of America