Design protection: Amended proposal

An amended proposal for a Council Regulation on EC design protection has been presented by the Commission. The proposal provides for protection of industrial designs throughout the EU on the basis of a single, simple and inexpensive registration application with the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market based in Alicante, Spain. Under the proposed regulation, once a design had been registered with the Office for Harmonisation, it would qualify for protection in all fifteen Member States. National registration of designs, under Directive 98/71 will co-exist with the Community design.

The proposed regulation defines what constitutes a design, establishes criteria for protection, fixes the duration of protection (minimum five years maximum twenty-five years), fixes the scope of protection (the designer would have the exclusive right to use the design and prevent any third party from using it), establishes limits to the design right, establishes rules on the nullity of registration of a design, and provides that EC protection would co-exist with existing national systems for protecting designs, including copyright, trade mark or patent law, and with the Community trade mark.

For the time being the proposal excludes the registration and protection of designs of spare components of complex products. This is because Directive 98/71 does not harmonise the design laws on these issues, but rather allows Member States to maintain the existing rules and requires them to be changed only if the purpose is to liberalise the market of such prices. However, the Commission will make a proposal concerning spare parts in parallel with a proposal to amend the spare part provisions of the Directive.