For companies, defending emblems is usually 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 emblems by themselves as a substitute of going to legislation companies. The Stockholm-based legaltech startup introduced at this time it has added $1.3 million to its seed spherical, bringing the overall to $3.4 million. The brand new funding was led by Industrifonden and Seed X, with participation from household places of work and angel buyers.
Based in 2020, Digip now has 500 clients in 42 international locations, starting from startups to giant enterprises that make a whole bunch of {dollars} in income. Digip at present makes about $500,000 in annual recurring income and that quantity is forecasted to develop 3x throughout the 2022 fiscal 12 months. Over the past 12 months, Digip has additionally expanded its IP service into the US and different worldwide markets.
Co-founder and CEO Viktor Johansson informed TechCrunch that Digip was based after its group noticed that entrepreneurs are reluctant to make use of conventional legislation companies that invoice by the hour. To file emblems, 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 must pay for a lawyer to file trademark purposes. However the course of doesn’t finish there. Companies even have to observe their emblems in markets the place they personal it, and that’s one other cost.
Digip combines all these steps into one on-line workflow. As an alternative of charging for various components of the method, its clients pay a flat month-to-month or yearly subscription price, plus software charges charged by trademark places of work.
Digip’s group
Companies can use Digip to analysis emblems and get on-demand recommendation from its group free of charge. In the event that they grow to be subscribers, they will then use Digip’s platform to handle their trademark purposes 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’ emblems by studying and decoding trademark knowledge. This permits onboarding to be automated and makes Digip’s course of scalable.
Johansson stated Digip initially thought-about providing its service to legislation companies, however determined to not since they’re gradual at adopting authorized tech. However Digip does have a world community of attorneys 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 client, life science, metaverse, blockchain and fintech.
“A cool factor with trademarking is that you simply decide up on early enterprise tendencies,” Johansson stated. “We have now been concerned in some fascinating tasks with rising applied sciences that can hit the markets in coming years. It is a actually enjoyable and thrilling a part of our setup.”
Johansson stated Digip’s closest competitors are nonetheless legislation companies, but it surely additionally considers attorneys to be shut collaborators. “As a result of digitization of authorized has been gradual many corporations are caught in legacy payments by the hour trademark options,” he stated. “Some legislation companies that rely considerably on trademark filings are our opponents, while different legislation companies that don’t do important enterprise by way of trademark filings see us as a fantastic potential associate for them.”
Over the following few months, Digip will launch a number of new options. These embrace an open API that can 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 broaden into new markets over the following 12 months.
