Designs: European Union Design

EUROPEAN UNION DESIGN

The European Union design is effective in the 28 countries of the European Union: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, United Kingdom, Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Hungary.

Furthermore, the European Union design is of unitary nature, i.e. it has the same effects throughout the European Union. In particular, registration, transfer, waiver, invalidity ruling and prohibition of use of a product reproducing a European Union design, carried out in any State of the European Union, also applies in all other States of the European Union.

In the European Union, the appearance of a product considered in its entirety or in part can be protected by filing a European Union design application, provided that it meets the registrability requirements or it is new and has individual character.

A single application suffices to apply for the registration of multiple designs (so-called multiple registration) provided that they are substantially homogeneous with each other or entered into the same class of the Locarno designs international applications.

Besides registration and publication fees, the multiple application shall be subject to the payment of surcharges for each design subsequent to the first.

REGISTRABILITY REQUIREMENTS

Designs can be registered if new and have an individual character.

In particular, a design is new if no identical design has been disclosed prior to the date of filing of the registration application.

Furthermore, a design has an individual character if it is capable of producing in the informed user a general impression different from that produced by other designs already disclosed.

Novelty is not affected:

disclosure of the design by the author, if the latter occurs within 12 months from the date of such disclosure;
Disclosure that cannot reasonably be known to the specialised circles in the industry in question during normal business within the European Union.

WHAT CANNOT BE REGISTERED

The following cannot be registered as European Union designs:

the characteristics of the appearance of the product which are determined solely by the technical function of the product;
the characteristics of the appearance of the product which are not visible in normal use of the product;
spare parts, i.e. characteristics of the appearance of the product which must necessarily be reproduced in their exact shapes and sizes in order to enable the product in which the design is incorporated or applied to be joined or connected with another product;
designs, whose use would create grounds of breach of a trademark or work of ingenuity protected by copyright.

WHO CAN REGISTER A DESIGN IN THE EUROPEAN UNION?

The author of the design or the successors thereof have the right to registration. If the European Union design is the result of the work of several authors, each of the latter has the right to registration jointly.

Any natural or legal person can register a European Union design.

DESIGN REGISTRATION PROCEDURE

The European Union design registration application is filed before the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM) based in Alicante (Spain), or at the Central industrial property office of a member state of the European Union, for example at the Italian Patent and Trademarks Office (UIBM).

The European Union design can be registered in any of the following languages: French, English, Italian, Spanish and German.

OHIM verifies whether formal and registrability requirements are met, but it does not conduct an examination on the merits of the registrability requirements.

After registration, the OHIM publishes the European Union design in the European Union design Bulletin. Furthermore, after publication, the OHIM grants the proprietor a European Union design registration certificate.

The duration of registration of a European Union design is renewable up to a maximum of 25 years, by paying a maintenance fee at the end of each five-year period.

PRIORITY

Priority may be claimed for the first prior design application filed in a Member State of the Paris Convention, within 6 months from the date of the aforementioned first application.