This chapter considers design law in the EU. Designs have something to do with shape and they are closely linked with the concept of a trade mark for a three-dimensional shape. Under the Community Designs Regulation, a single registered design right is granted in essence and this is done for the whole of the EU. That system is administered by the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM), which also administers the Community trade mark (Article 2 of the Regulation). As with the Community trade mark, the Community design right has a unitary character (Article 1(3) of the Regulation). The remainder of the chapter discusses the requirements for the grant of a registered design; grounds for refusal of registration; rights of the owner and infringement; ownership of and entitlement to a registered design; grounds for invalidity of a registered design; duration of the registered design right; and international commercial exploitation of registered designs.
Chapter
19. Designs
Justine Pila and Paul L.C. Torremans
Chapter
20. Design and copyright
Aesthetic designs are protected under the provisions of the Registered Designs Act 1949, while functional designs are governed by the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This chapter discusses the natural overlap between design law and copyright, and the influence of the law reform in s. 51 CDPA 1988 on the defence created in the British Leyland case. It also looks at the reform of s. 52 CDPA 1988.
Chapter
21. Registered designs
This chapter discusses the law on registered designs. It covers the requirements for the grant of a registered design; grounds for refusal of registration; ownership of a registered design; rights of the owner and infringement; grounds on which a design may be declared invalid; duration of the registered design right; spare parts; international commercial exploitation; and EU law on registered design.
Chapter
23. Designs—an overview
This chapter summarizes the discussion of the law on registered and unregistered designs. The Design Directive, as implemented in the revised version of the Registered Designs Act 1949, has put in place a modern system of registered design protection that does away with the aesthetical requirements of the old 1949 Act and only attempts to exclude technical matters that should, in principle, be dealt with by patent rather than design law. The continued enforcement of a domestic unregistered design right that was supposed to fit in seamlessly with a system of registered rights that no longer exists is no longer necessary. The overlap of protection creates confusion and an undue duplication of rights.
Chapter
22. Unregistered designs
This chapter discusses the law on unregistered designs. The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 defines unregistered designs as the design of any aspect of the shape or configuration (whether internal or external) of the whole, or part, of an item. In order to secure protection, such a design must be original, in the sense that it should not be commonplace in the design field in question at the time of its creation. Unregistered design rights roughly offer 15 years of protection, during which the right holder has the exclusive right to reproduce the design for commercial purposes. Infringement consists in anyone making an item to the design without authorization and in the making of a design document that records the design for the purposes of enabling someone else to make items to it, again without authorization.
