Novelty and Individual Character in the Community Design Law
(2005)Department of Law
- Abstract
- Design importance in product marketing has been dramatically increasing in the last few years. There is hardly a commodity available in the market which could escape the ever-growing design trend. Consumer design awareness is growing simultaneously and thus more and more companies choose to invest into researching possible design applications to their products. Currently where production costs are so low in the third world countries design is the key competitive tool for European industry to survive this battle. Design protection varies greatly from one Member State to another in the Community. This on its own causes problems to free movement of goods and hinders the functioning of internal market. Mainly for the above mentioned reasons... (More)
- Design importance in product marketing has been dramatically increasing in the last few years. There is hardly a commodity available in the market which could escape the ever-growing design trend. Consumer design awareness is growing simultaneously and thus more and more companies choose to invest into researching possible design applications to their products. Currently where production costs are so low in the third world countries design is the key competitive tool for European industry to survive this battle. Design protection varies greatly from one Member State to another in the Community. This on its own causes problems to free movement of goods and hinders the functioning of internal market. Mainly for the above mentioned reasons the Community has introduced Community design protection that functions in parallel to the national systems and should hopefully in the near future outrun the national protection. Within this thesis the author has chosen to discuss and analyze to important notions of novelty and individual character. These two notions form the protection requirements for the Community design. Each design in order to be protected under the Community design system will have to be new and have individual character. The author analyzes the legislative preparatory works and doctrine to give flesh to those two important notions. Such questions as when the design should be considered to be new and when it will be deemed to be similar to already known design are discussed. According to the individual character test the design will have individual character when it produces an overall different impression on the informed user. Who is the informed user and when one will have different overall impression is analyzed. Throughout understanding of these notions will enable one to grasp the boundaries of protection that Community design provides and thus recognize the benefits of using it. A research to find case law on the Community designs is carried out and the results are shortly discussed. At the end different interpretations are discussed and the author provides some proposals of how one or other issue could be handled. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/1554965
- author
- Miniotas, Mikas
- supervisor
- organization
- year
- 2005
- type
- H1 - Master's Degree (One Year)
- subject
- keywords
- European Affairs
- language
- English
- id
- 1554965
- date added to LUP
- 2010-03-08 15:22:47
- date last changed
- 2010-03-08 15:22:47
@misc{1554965,
abstract = {{Design importance in product marketing has been dramatically increasing in the last few years. There is hardly a commodity available in the market which could escape the ever-growing design trend. Consumer design awareness is growing simultaneously and thus more and more companies choose to invest into researching possible design applications to their products. Currently where production costs are so low in the third world countries design is the key competitive tool for European industry to survive this battle. Design protection varies greatly from one Member State to another in the Community. This on its own causes problems to free movement of goods and hinders the functioning of internal market. Mainly for the above mentioned reasons the Community has introduced Community design protection that functions in parallel to the national systems and should hopefully in the near future outrun the national protection. Within this thesis the author has chosen to discuss and analyze to important notions of novelty and individual character. These two notions form the protection requirements for the Community design. Each design in order to be protected under the Community design system will have to be new and have individual character. The author analyzes the legislative preparatory works and doctrine to give flesh to those two important notions. Such questions as when the design should be considered to be new and when it will be deemed to be similar to already known design are discussed. According to the individual character test the design will have individual character when it produces an overall different impression on the informed user. Who is the informed user and when one will have different overall impression is analyzed. Throughout understanding of these notions will enable one to grasp the boundaries of protection that Community design provides and thus recognize the benefits of using it. A research to find case law on the Community designs is carried out and the results are shortly discussed. At the end different interpretations are discussed and the author provides some proposals of how one or other issue could be handled.}},
author = {{Miniotas, Mikas}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Novelty and Individual Character in the Community Design Law}},
year = {{2005}},
}