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For companies, defending logos is commonly a prolonged and costly course of, particularly if they’ve a number of manufacturers. Digip digitizes a lot of the method, serving to its clients file logos by themselves as an alternative of going to regulation corporations. The Stockholm-based legaltech startup introduced at the moment it has added $1.3 million to its seed spherical, bringing the entire to $3.4 million. The brand new funding was led by Industrifonden and Seed X, with participation from household workplaces and angel buyers.
Based in 2020, Digip now has 500 clients in 42 international locations, starting from startups to massive enterprises that make a whole bunch of {dollars} in income. Digip at the moment makes about $500,000 in annual recurring income and that quantity is forecasted to develop 3x through the 2022 fiscal yr. Over the past yr, Digip has additionally expanded its IP service into the US and different worldwide markets.
Co-founder and CEO Viktor Johansson instructed TechCrunch that Digip was based after its crew noticed that entrepreneurs are reluctant to make use of conventional regulation corporations that invoice by the hour. To file logos, companies normally ask a lawyer to conduct trademark searches. They’re billed per search, which provides up rapidly if a enterprise has a number of manufacturers they should trademark. Then they need to pay for a lawyer to file trademark functions. However the course of doesn’t finish there. Companies even have to observe their logos in markets the place they personal it, and that’s one other cost.
Digip combines all these steps into one on-line workflow. As a substitute of charging for various elements of the method, its clients pay a flat month-to-month or yearly subscription charge, plus software charges charged by trademark workplaces.
Digip’s crew
Companies can use Digip to analysis logos and get on-demand recommendation from its crew without cost. In the event that they develop into subscribers, they will then use Digip’s platform to handle their trademark functions in 180 international locations. The platform permits this with a trademark warehouse that has up to date trademark knowledge. Knowledge assortment and updates are automated as Digip enter new markets.
It additionally trains AI/ML algorithms for searches that cowl 100 languages and manages clients’ logos by studying and decoding trademark knowledge. This allows onboarding to be automated and makes Digip’s course of scalable.
Johansson stated Digip initially thought-about providing its service to regulation corporations, however determined to not since they’re sluggish at adopting authorized tech. However Digip does have a worldwide community of legal professionals that its clients can go to for assist.
Johansson stated that Digip’s largest markets are the UK, Nordic international locations and the European Union, and it’s seeing extra demand from the US, Canada and Australia. Lots of its clients are venture-backed companies that run digital companies in sectors in sectors together with SaaS, deep tech, direct to shopper, life science, metaverse, blockchain and fintech.
“A cool factor with trademarking is that you just decide up on early enterprise developments,” Johansson stated. “We’ve got been concerned in some attention-grabbing initiatives with rising applied sciences that may hit the markets in coming years. This can be a actually enjoyable and thrilling a part of our setup.”
Johansson stated Digip’s closest competitors are nonetheless regulation corporations, but it surely additionally considers legal professionals to be shut collaborators. “As a result of digitization of authorized has been sluggish many firms are caught in legacy payments by the hour trademark options,” he stated. “Some regulation corporations that rely considerably on trademark filings are our opponents, while different regulation corporations that don’t do vital enterprise by trademark filings see us as an incredible potential associate for them.”
Over the subsequent few months, Digip will launch a number of new options. These embrace an open API that may let companions combine Digip’s expertise into their workflows. Johansson stated customers will see a considerably improved trademark search on Digip.com. The corporate may even increase into new markets over the subsequent 12 months.
