COMMUNITY DESIGNS


A REMARKABLE SUCCESS STORY: THE REGISTERED COMMUNITY DESIGN


In little more than a decade, the registered community design has become an essential part of many companies’ IP strategies, as Udo Pfl eghar explains.


When the fi rst registered community design (RCD) applications were fi led on April 1, 2003, no-one could have foreseen the resounding success of the system during the years that followed. In that fi rst year alone some 40,500 applications for RCDs were fi led with the Offi ce for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM)—far more than the management of the OHIM had expected. Some 10 years later, more than 690,000 applications have been fi led.


T e framework for the RCD is contained in the Community Design Regulation which came into force on March 6, 2002. T is was a revolution in the protection of intellectual and industrial


property rights in Europe similar to that


caused by the introduction of the Community trademark some six years earlier.


Community designs grant an exclusive right in the external appearance of a product or part of it, to the extent that this appearance results from the features of the product itself and/ or its ornamentation. Such features include in particular the lines, contours, colours, shape, texture and/or materials. T e design simply needs to be novel and possess individual character.


T e products concerned can be any industrially manufactured or manually produced items including packaging, graphics and symbols as


well as typefaces. Applications can be fi led within one year of the date that the design was made available to the relevant public in the EU, and RCDs can be protected for up to 25 years.


Alongside the RCD, the regulation also created the unregistered community design, which is protected for three years following disclosure to the public without any administrative steps. Unlike the RCD for which there is a registration certifi cate, its existence has to be established by evidence if proceedings against infringers are based on the unregistered right.


T e strategic value of design rights has been very clearly demonstrated in the high profi le


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World Intellectual Property Review September/October 2013 109


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