Design Law: What's Up-and-Coming?

The most important material aspects derived from national legislations on protection of designs are harmonised in Community Design Directive 98/71/EC of 1998. Besides existing national legislations providing national design protection, Community Design Regulation No 6/2002 was introduced in 2002 and created a unified system for obtaining community designs to which uniform protection is given with uniform effect throughout the EU.

Generally, a "design" means the appearance of the whole or a part of a product resulting from the features of the lines, contours, colours, shape, texture and/or materials of the product itself and/or its ornamentation. Thus, designs protect industrial or handcrafted products, as well as product packaging, logos, graphical designs, fonts and much more.