Industrial Property

The mission of the Industrial Property Department is to protect innovation and defend it in the case of infringement. Supporting the R&D department, it intervenes more and more upstream, both in order to protect our ideas better and to explore little known fields.

In exploratory mode, the department marks out all research work by making an inventory of every single existing and filed invention (basic technologies, uses etc.). At the same time, Industrial Property plays a defensive role by building ramparts around our inventions and a more offensive role by blocking copies and counterfeits, whether they are of brands, patents or models.
To this end, the department actively monitors what is going on in the most sensitive areas (mainly China and the Middle East) in order to protect our rights. It uses a variety of methods including seizing counterfeit products, legal action and destruction.

The department was very active in 2010 and was mainly concerned with our Actifry patents, much coveted throughout the world.

Filing patents

Protection remains the primary mission of industrial property and constituted a great deal of the department’s work in 2010, with 110 patents and 273 Soleau envelopes filed.

One thousand inventions are currently protected in an average of 5 countries each, totalling approximately 5,000 protection titles.

For several years now, Groupe SEB has ranked among the 20 top patent filers in France.