Smit & Van Wyk Incorporated is a specialist South African legal practice dealing exclusively with intellectual property law.  Our fields of practice encompass all aspects, including litigation, relating to patents, trademarks, industrial designs, copyright, as well as providing advice on the commercial rights attached to each of these forms of protection. The lawyers at our firm, most of whom are also qualified engineers or scientists, are dedicated individuals, skilled in their fields of practice, and can provide clear advice on complex legal matters to clients from all over the globe.

Our experienced support staff, aided by state-of-the-art software, ensure that we remain efficient and up to date. The foreign department of our firm, in addition to advising on protection, specializes in assisting overseas agents and applicants with filing and prosecution of cases in South Africa and other African countries. We also attend to maintenance of South African cases. Please feel free to contact us should you require any further information or assistance.

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Apart from the traditional forms of engineering and gadget-type inventions, our patent practice is specialized to deal with inventions on the cutting edge of technology, such as Biotechnology, Bioinformatics, Biochemistry, Nano-technology, Telecommunications, Computer technology, and Software. These are fields in which the generation of intellectual property in the form of patents are essential to successfully compete against more established players.

The term "intellectual property" (IP) refers to creations of the mind. Although such creations are often intangible, they may have commercial and strategic value. Intellectual property, once formalized in the form of a patent, registered design, or trademark, is therefore treated in business as an asset on the balance sheet and has a monetary value associated with it. Irrespective of your type of business, it is most likely that your business has generated intellectual property of value through the creativity of the individuals in the business. It is of utmost importance for individuals and businesses alike to take steps to protect their intellectual property and then to exploit the commercial and strategic value of the intellectual property.

In exercising your creativity, you will most likely generate concepts which are new and which, although intangible, are valuable to you or your company. These may include customer lists, standard operating procedures, a new logo that you have designed, or an invention. If these forms of intellectual property meet certain requirements, they will be eligible for protection and hence may contribute to an even greater extent to helping you or your company grow.

Strange as it may sound, many individuals and businesses are unaware of the intellectual property that they have created, or they often underestimate its value. Therefore, if certain steps are not taken to protect their intellectual property, such intellectual property cannot be exploited to its full commercial potential.

Therefore, the first step in protecting your intellectual property is to identify it. Although it may seem like an obvious process, it is most often not possible to identify the intellectual property of a business without involving specialized expertise.

Once the intellectual property of a business has been identified, it is possible to take steps to protect it, whether by means of registered forms of intellectual property protection such as patents, trademarks, registered designs, or unregistered forms of intellectual property protection, such as copyright, contractual agreements or non-statutory forms of protection.

Our practice specializes in assisting South African and international clients to identify, protect and exploit their patents, trademarks and registered designs in South Africa and internationally. Should you wish to make use of our expertise, you are welcome to contact us after having consulted our pages on patents, trademarks, designs, copyright, biotechnology, or software.