A Community design is a unitary industrial design right that covers the European Union

European Union

The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...

. It has both unregistered and registered forms. The unregistered Community design came into effect on 6 March 2002 and the registered Community design was available from 1 April 2003.

Legal basis

Council Regulation (EC) No 6/2002, as implemented by Commission Regulation (EC) No 2245/2002, created both unregistered and registered European Community designs. The Community design is a unitary right that has equal effect across the European Union

European Union

The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...

. The unregistered form of the right has existed since 6 March 2002 while the registered form came into effect on 1 April 2003.

Definitions

A design

Design

Design as a noun informally refers to a plan or convention for the construction of an object or a system while “to design” refers to making this plan...

 is defined as "the appearance of the whole or a part of a product resulting from the features of, in particular, the lines, contours, colours, shape, texture and/or materials of the product itself and/or its ornamentation".

Designs may be protected if:

• they are novel, that is if no identical design has been made available to the public;
• they have individual character, that is the "informed user" would find it different from other designs which are available to the public. Where a design forms part of a more complex product, the novelty and individual character of the design are judged on the part of the design which is visible during normal use.

Scope of protection

The scope of protection conferred by a Community design includes any design which does not produce a different overall impression on an informed user, taking the degree of freedom of the designer into consideration. A Community design further confers on its holder the exclusive right to use it and to prevent any third party not having his consent from using it. For an unregistered Community design, however, the contested use must have resulted from copying the protected design.

Term

An unregistered Community design lasts for a period of three years from the date on which the design was first
made available to the public within the Community. A registered Community design lasts for up to 25 years from the date on which an application for registration was filed, subject to the payment of maintenance fees. The registration process is administered by OHIM in Alicante

Alicante

Alicante or Alacant is a city in Spain, the capital of the province of Alicante and of the comarca of Alacantí, in the south of the Valencian Community. It is also a historic Mediterranean port. The population of the city of Alicante proper was 334,418, estimated , ranking as the second-largest...

.

Effects

The unregistered Community design provides useful, short-term protection for items of short market duration. The registered Community design provides substantial cost savings compared to obtaining national registrations in individual European countries. The Community design also permits those having business in a number of European countries to protect their designs in all of those countries more simply.