European Registered Designs

There is a European Regulation that applies to the European Union Countries that enables one to file a single Application to register a Design in all of the European Countries. This enables one to protect the design throughout Europe and pay a single renewal fee every 10 years to renew the Design.

The maximum life of a European Community Design is 25 years providing Renewal fees are paid every 5 years. The Regulation also establishes an unregistered Design Right that runs in parallel with the Registered Design, and these are discussed below.

Any natural or legal person, without restriction as to nationality or state of incorporation may apply for registration of a European Design. For a design to be registerable, the overall impression produced on an informed user must differ from the overall impression of designs made available to the public. In other words it is the appearance of the design that is important. The degree of freedom of the designer in developing the design will be taken into consideration.

Features of appearance that are dictated solely by function are not registerable. Furthermore, features of a product that enable the product to fit against another product so called ("must fit " features) are not registerable.  The exception to this is that protection of a design serving the purpose of allowing multiple assemblies or connection of mutually interchangeable products within a modular system are registerable.

Disclosure of the design, whether with, or without, the consent of the owner, in the 12 months preceding the date of filing of the application to register the design, will not invalidate the Registered Design. However, caution is advised in relying on this period of grace because there may not be a similar period of grace in other countries not party to the European Registered Design Regulation. It is not necessary to register the design in respect of a specific article; a Registered Design will extend to all articles that incorporate the design. Unlike UK Design law, where one has to file a separate design application for each variation of a design, it is also possible to file a single design application and include multiple designs that vary slightly in the same application.

Registered Design Rights There is also an automatic unregistered right called a   "Design Right” that has a limited life of 3 years from publication of the Registered Design. It should be borne in mind that in the UK the unregistered Design Right is not dependant upon filing a Registered Design Application and has a longer life (see information on UK Design law) whereas in Europe the life span of an unregistered Design Right is longer and only exists in parallel with a Registered Design.

When filing a Registered Design Application, one can delay publication of the Design by up to 3 years on payment of a fee, and thereby obtain slightly longer protection of the unregistered Design Rights in European Countries because the Unregistered Design Right runs from publication of the Registered Design.

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