Questel•Orbit acquires DesignMuster and expands offering to registered industrial designs

Comprehensive worldwide coverage of the three kinds of IP information: patents, trademarks and industrial designs.

[ClickPress, Thu Jun 22 2006] Questel•Orbit today announced the acquisition of a majority share in DesignMuster, a start-up company dedicated to registered industrial design information. This start-up developed DesignFinderSM, a very powerful workflow management system aimed at federating, retrieving and watching registered industrial design information. A special focus has been put on rapidly browsing large numbers of images and pictures. DesignFinderSM communicates information securely between right holders and agencies involved in the policing and enforcement of intellectual property rights.

This acquisition allows Questel•Orbit to strengthen its position in the field of intellectual property information by offering a comprehensive worldwide coverage of the three kinds of IP information: patents, trademarks and industrial designs. The addition of DesignMuster comes at a particularly important time when counterfeiting is becoming more important in the increasingly globalized economy.

DesignFinderSM initially covers design information from major European countries, the US and WIPO and will soon include Asia. It has been built to fill a gap, as worldwide industrial design information was not handled in a standard and efficient way.

“IP offices, right holders and enforcement agencies need more focused co-operation to better tackle the mounting trade in counterfeits” said Rick Vieira, co-founder of DesignMuster and former Vice-President of Product Management, Business Development and Patent Office liaison at MicroPatent.

“This acquisition is beneficial to the user community as it combines expertise in industrial designs with a worldwide presence in Intellectual Property information.” added Charles Besson, CEO of Questel•Orbit.

About DesignMuster:
DesignMuster is a start-up company created in 2005 aimed at making industrial design the key focus of the enterprise. It started thanks to a close co-operation with Henkel and the German Patent and Trademark Office. For more information, please visit www.designmuster.com.

About Questel•Orbit:
For over 30 years, Questel•Orbit has been helping manage the world's most important IP portfolios. We provide a suite of leading-edge patent and trademark services to executives, scientists, researchers and competitive intelligence professionals, and help turn their IP information into real value and enhance their organizations' competitiveness. Known for our patent and trademark information collection, we also provide a wide array of tools for Internet and Web-based searching; reading, analyzing, visualizing and communicating search results; ordering and distributing copies; evaluating individual patents and entire portfolios. For more information, please visit www.questel.orbit.com.

Contact: Europe:
Laetitia Aymonin Karine Wackernie
Marketing Communications Manager Marketing Communications Manager
Questel•Orbit, Inc. Questel•Orbit
+1-703-684-3042 +33 (0)4 92 94 55 05
laymonin@questel.orbit.com kwackernie@questel.fr

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