Intellectual & Industrial Property Industrial Property Full text for downloading (PDF files: 174 KB - 901 KB) Design protection: Commission presents amended proposal for Regulation An amended proposal for a Council Regulation on the European Community Design was presented by the European Commission on 21 June. The proposal would encourage innovation and help to prevent counterfeiting and piracy by providing for protection of industrial designs throughout the EU's Single Market on the basis of a single, simple and inexpensive registration procedure with the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market, based in Alicante, Spain. The amended proposal includes all the relevant provisions on substantive design law featured in Directive 98/71/EC, which harmonises national rules on design protection, and so is fully compatible with the Directive. The proposal takes full account of extensive consultations with industry, intellectual property practitioners, consumer organisations, government experts and other interested parties. Under the proposed Regulation, once a design had been registered with the Office for Harmonisation (which already handles applications for the registration of Community Trade Marks), it would qualify for protection in all fifteen Member States. Potential conflicts stemming from the existence of an exclusive right in one Member State but not in other would be avoided. National registration of designs, under rules harmonised by Directive 98/71/EC, will co-exist with the Community Design. The proposed Regulation would: define what constitutes a "design" establish criteria for protection (a design would have to be new and have an individual character) fix the duration protection (minimum of 5 years and maximum of 25 years) fix the scope of protection (the designer would have the exclusive right to use the design and prevent any third party from using it) establish limits to the design right (e.g. it would not normally cover inter-connections between components) establish rules on the nullity of the registration of a design provide that Community protection of designs would co-exist with existing Member State systems for protecting designs, including under copyright, trade mark or patent law, and with the Community Trade Mark. The amended proposal for a Regulation excludes, for the time being, the registration and protection of designs of spare components of complex products (such as visible car spare parts). This is in order to be compatible with the Directive on design protection (98/71/EC), which does not harmonise the design laws of the Member States on this issue, but rather allows Member States to maintain their existing rules and change them only if the purpose is to liberalise the market for such parts (the so-called "freeze plus" compromise). However, the Commission shall make a proposal concerning the use and protection of spare parts under the Regulation in parallel with a proposal to amend the spare part provisions of the Directive on design protection, following consultations launched with interested parties when the Directive was adopted in October 1998. Compared with the initial proposal for a Regulation on Community Design of 1993, the amended proposal incorporates a change in the legal basis requested by the European Parliament and the Court of Justice (new Article 308 instead of new Article 95). It would therefore have to be adopted by a unanimous decision of the EU's Council of Ministers, after consultation of the European Parliament, rather than by co-decision of the European Parliament and the Council (qualified majority). Date: 21 June 1999 Contact: MARKT-E2@cec.eu.int [ Update on the Single Market ] - [ Free Movement of People & Individual Rights ] - [ Free Movement of Goods ] - [ Services & Establishment ] - [ Financial Services ] - [ Company Law, Accounting & Auditing ] - [ Public Procurement ] - [ Media, Information Society & Data Protection ] - [ Intellectual & Industrial Property ] - [ Economic & Monetary Union ] - [ Infringements ]