Industrial designs
The protection of an industrial design by registration is intended for design solutions. Design means the appearance of a product, consisting in particular of the characteristics of lines, contours, colours, shape, structure or materials of the product itself, or its decoration. It is the visually perceptible property of a product, not, for example, its technical or structural nature. The product is an industrially or crafted spatial or area object.
An industrial design can only be protected if it meets the conditions laid down in Act No. 207/2000 Coll., on the protection of designs. The basic conditions are the newness and individual nature of the design. It shall be new if the same design has not been made available to the public before the date of filing of the application or before the date of priority. Designs shall be considered to be the same if they only differ insignificantly. A design shall be of an individual nature if the overall impression it gives to an informed user differs from the overall impression it gives of the design made available before the date of filing the application. The examination shall not be considered to be open to the public, where the design has been made available by the designator or their successor in title within 12 months of the date of filing the application. In addition to the abovementioned basic registration requirements for design protection, there are other, less frequent in practice, stipulated by law. As far as they are concerned, reference should be made to the applicable Act No. 207/2000 Coll., on the protection of designs.
Registration of an industrial design
Registration of an industrial design is applied for by an industrial design application, preferably using an official form available free of charge on the Internet or in the registry of the Office. The design application is filed by post, electronically or in person at the Office. The application shall contain information on the applicant, an expression of their will to register the design and a representation of the design giving a clear picture of the appearance of the product. The representation of the design is the most important annex to the application and its implementation needs to be given great care, since it is the only one that defines the subject-matter of protection and the scope of such protection. The image may take the form of a photograph or drawing. The application may be submitted as simple, i.e., registration is required for a single design or as a collective design, i.e., the application is required to register two or more designs. Designs contained in a collective application must belong to one class of international design classification.
The protection obtained ensures the owner's exclusive right to use the design, to prevent third parties from using it without their consent, to give consent to the use of the design to other persons (licences) or to transfer the right to the design (e.g. to sell it) to them. The use of a design means, in particular, the manufacture or market placement of a product in which the design is embodied or applied. The protection of a registered design shall last for 5 years from the date of filing the design application. The owner of the design may renew the protection period repeatedly, always by 5 years, up to a total period of 25 years.
The CONVERGENCE PROGRAMME PROJECT CP 6 – Graphic representations of designs aims to provide guidance on design representation. Specifically, the document defines the use of disclaimers (limitations on the scope of protection), types of views, and how to display designs against a neutral background. The document also contains an overview of the standards used by the authorities for design applications submitted by electronic means and submitted in paper form.
This common practice shall be published in this joint declaration in order to further increase transparency, legal certainty and predictability for the benefit of surveyors and users.
Convergence on graphic representations of designs - Common Communication (pdf, 2,9 MB)
FAQ (pdf, 660 kB)
Criteria for assessing the availability of designs on the Internet
The CONVERGENCE PROGRAMME PROJECT CP 10 – Criteria for assessing the availability of designs available on the Internet aims to establish common criteria for assessing the accessibility of designs on the Internet and to provide appropriate recommendations. The purpose is to provide clear and comprehensive guidelines for assessing the availability of designs on the Internet, for proving the date of design publication on the Internet and for submitting evidence demonstrating the publication of designs on the Internet.
Criteria for assessing the availability of designs on the Internet (pdf, 2,1 MB)