industrial design

Industrial design grants legal protection to designs. Industrial design (or simply design) protects the outer appearance of a product. It is required to fulfill the condition of novelty and individual character. There are two options to choose from as far as the design protection goes in the Czech Republic. Design can be registered purely nationally, or through a Community design for the whole European Union. In the latter case the protection covers all states of the European Union. The Community design takes substantially less time to be registered than the national designs, as the proceedings ( much like the proceedings in the case of the Czech utility designs) are governed by the registration principle – i.e. in the registration proceedings, the office does not examine, whether published designs exist, that would impede the registration.

The protection period of a design is 25 years at maximum both with the national designs and in the registered Community designs. The so called “unregistered Community design”, which protects design solutions of the product without a registration for three years from first publishing, has a special treatement. However it protects solely against outright plagiarisms, and not against imitation (with only slight modifications).

The right to the industrial design belongs to the author – designer. With the “employee industrial design” the general rule is that the design rights are transferred to the employer. In industrial designs, there is a the most prominent overlap of industrial rights and copyright, since the designer is often the creator of an author’s work embodied in the design. From the point of view of the intellectual property and effective way of the design rights use, it is more advantageous to have a registered industrial design.