The EU design legislative reform package has just been published in the Official Journal of the European Union, affecting both the Community Design Regulation and the Directive on the legal protection of designs.

After more than 20 years without significant changes to the current regulation, a number of new features have been introduced with the main objective of improving harmonisation between EU Member States, adapting to new technological developments, clarifying and broadening the definition of design in the digital environment, as well as facilitating the liberalisation of the spare parts market.

The new proposal redefines the concept of design more broadly, extending it to non-physical products or clarifying that protection is also possible, for example, for graphical user interfaces and virtual spaces.

Although until now these design categories could be protected, the law did not explicitly include them in the definition of design itself, since the scope of protection of a design extended to physical products. In this way, the legislation is adapted to include not only industrial or handcrafted articles but also designs in digital format, which include, apart from static designs, animations, movements and transitions that can be visualised in any digital medium, including the metaverse.

The new law also aims to give a broader scope of protection to products created by 3D printing, as it proposes that protection should not be limited to the printed product, as was the case until now, but extends to the creation, downloading, copying or distribution of any support or computer programme incorporating the design for the purpose of manufacturing the product of that design.

On the other hand, and after years of uncertainty, as regards the scope of protection of “spare parts”, especially in the automotive field, a repair clause has been included which excludes spare parts of a complex product from protection as a design. Thus, for example, a vehicle headlamp that is protected as an industrial design by the vehicle manufacturer could be manufactured by an auxiliary automotive company, provided that the shape of the headlamp is exactly the same as the original headlamp and provided that it is used for repair purposes. This clause will liberalise the aftermarket and allow EU consumers to face lower repair costs.
 

Other regulatory changes to be implemented are related to the way in which designs are processed before the EUIPO (European Union Intellectual Property Office) located in Alicante, which will become the only office in which design applications can be filed. This design that will also see its name changed from Community design to EU design, thus harmonising the terminology with that of the rest of the European institutions.

These regulatory changes also propose simplifying filing procedures through the payment of a single application fee, as well as establishing measures aimed at reducing costs in order to make it more appealing for designers and design-related companies to register their designs throughout the European Union. In this sense, it will now be possible to file in a single multiple application as many designs as desired, up to a maximum of 50, without the need for these designs to refer to products of the same type. In this way, for example, it will be possible to include in the same application designs relating to furniture, together with designs relating to lighting, and the owner will benefit from the reduction of fees associated with each design filed in a multiple application.

On the other hand, the reform also aims to give greater visibility and coverage to the design, as design owners will be able to indicate that their design is registered by displaying the letter “D” inside a circle on any product incorporating or featuring the registered design, and accompany it with the design registration number and/or contain a hyperlink to the EUIPO website where the design registration details can be seen.

In short, the new regulation proposes a series of measures that will encourage individual designers or the design industry in general to protect their creations in the European Union, for both physical product designs and non-physical product designs that are increasingly present in the digital environment.    

Gabriel Castilla. Engineering and Software Manager | Patent Department