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
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.
