________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Copyright © Churchill Attorneys 2010 | Legal Notices | Contact Us | Site Map
International Design Protection.
As mentioned in our overview article, design rights must be pursued individually in each country for which protection is required. The following outline describes some of the more common steps used to secure design protection in each country of interest. Many variations are available, and Churchill Attorneys can provide more detailed advice specific to your needs.
The filing of an application for registered design in Australia is typically the first step taken by a local innovator company. This filing secures a “right of priority” over the design in Australia, with this priority date being applicable to any later international filings under the Paris Convention so long as the later filing occurs within six months of the filing date of the Australian application.
International applications may be a filed directly into your countries of interest, or via a regional system such as that provided by the Registered Community Design system which provides protection across all Member States of the European Union with a single application. Similarly, a design can be registered across many African countries via the African Regional Industrial Property Organization (ARIPO) and the African Intellectual Property Organization (OAPI).
As well as the Registered Community Designs system referred to above, European law also provides some protection without any formal registration. A major shortcoming of an Unregistered Community Design is that the term of protection is for only 3 years from the date that the design was made public. By contrast, the term for a Registered Community Design is 25 years from the filing date of the application. Nonetheless, the unregistered design right can be an economical and useful form of protection for products with short life cycles such as “novelty” products.
Some countries provide design protection automatically, although sometimes only where formal protection has been obtained in another country. For example, A British registration automatically provides protection in jurisdictions including Cyprus, Brunei, Fiji, Jamaica, Malta, Solomon Islands, Tanzania and Vanuatu.
As will be apparent from the above, a number of overlapping systems exist for the protection of industrial designs across the world, and professional assistance should be sought to ensure your requirements for protection are met.
