Scope

The Design Directive and the Community Design Regulation applies to the registration of design rights and community design rights, respectively.

The proposal widens the scope of the Design Directive and Community Design Regulation by broadening the definitions of “design” and “products”. The definition of “design” will now extend to the movement, transition, or any other sort of animation of design features. The definition of “product” will now also include designs not embodied in physical products, objects materializing in digital form (e.g. NFTs), spatial arrangements of items intended to form an interior environment, and graphical user interfaces.

Relevance

The proposal to revise the Design Directive and the Community Design Regulation seeks to align the design protection systems in the EU with the digital age and make it more accessible and efficient for applicants. Of particular interest for the technology sector is the expanded possibility to register digital designs, such as graphic user interfaces.

Key takeaways

Other main changes of the proposal include:

• Expanding the scope of design protection by including means such as 3D printing technologies
• Introduction of a “repair clause”, in which design protection shall not be conferred to designs that constitute component parts of a complex product, where the appearance of the design is dependant for the sole purpose of the repair of that complex product in order to restore its original appearance
• Revising the registration process, by broadening the means of which applicants can represent their designs, for example by video or 3D printing, and allowing applicants to combine multiple designs in one application.