Information on the national application (registration in the Czech Republic)
Information for applicants for industrial designs
The rules for filing and processing applications for industrial designs and the rights and obligations in industrial designs entered in the register are set out under Act No. 207/2000 Coll., on the protection of industrial designs and amending Act No. 527/1990 Coll., on inventions, industrial designs and rationalisation proposals, as amended, Act No. 500/2004 Coll., administrative procedure code, and Act No. 634/2004 Coll., on administrative fees, as amended.
The purpose of the following text is merely to highlight selected aspects of the issues in question; the text does not replace the full text of the relevant legal standards.
To apply for an entry of an industrial design in the register, an industrial design application must be lodged with the Industrial Property Office (hereinafter referred to as the Office). Detailed requirements for the application and supporting documents of the application are laid down in the text entitled Recommendations for the formal editing of supporting documents to industrial design applications and in the Instructions for completing industrial design applications (pdf, 158 kB).
With the filing of the application, the applicant acquires the right of priority. If the applicant wishes to claim a right of priority under another previously filed application, which results from an international convention, they must do so either in the application or within one month of filing the application and they must prove the prior right of priority within the time limit set by the Office, otherwise the claim shall be disregarded.
The Office will subject the application to an examination, i.e., it will establish whether the application and its subject-matter meet the statutory requirements. If the industrial design is registrable, the Office shall enter the industrial design in the register of industrial designs and disclose it. The applicant will become its proprietor. A certificate of registration will be issued for the proprietor of the industrial design. The registration is announced in the Bulletin of the Office. If, in the application, the applicant has requested a deferment of the disclosure of their industrial design for not more than 30 days from the date of filing of the application or from the date of priority, the Office shall only disclose the registered industrial design after the lapse of the requested period; along with the notification of the registration, the Office shall announce the deferred disclosure of the industrial design.
The proprietor has the exclusive right to use the registered industrial design, and to grant consent to using the industrial design to other persons or to transfer the industrial design to them. The consent to using an industrial design is granted through a licence agreement, which takes effect vis-a-vis third parties upon entry in the register of industrial designs. The registration of an industrial design is valid for five years from submission of the industrial design application. The proprietor of an industrial design may repeatedly renew the protection period, every time for an additional 5 years up to the overall period of 25 years from the date of filing the industrial design application. An application for renewal of the protection may only be submitted during the last year of the current five-year period and the effect thereof is conditional upon the payment of the relevant fee. If the renewal application is not submitted during that window, the proprietor may still submit it within an extra six months of the date on which it was to be submitted at the latest. The responsibility for keeping the design protection valid rests with its proprietor.
The Office will conduct the industrial design application procedure with the applicant or an agent appointed by them. The designer is not a party to the procedure unless they are at once the applicant.
The specific amounts of the administrative fees charged for the acts to be performed by the Office are set out in the Tariff of Administrative Fees, which forms an appendix to Act No. 634/2004 Coll., on administrative fees, as amended. The administrative fees are paid upon filing, and the fee for each requested act shall be paid separately.
More information may be obtained from the Office’s Information Centre or other pages on this website.
Sections of an industrial design application (pdf, 156 kB)
Instructions for completing the form (pdf, 158 kB) (the instructions concern the version of the form that cannot be completed electronically; for forms that can be completed electronically, the interactive help is part of the form)
Recommendations for the formal editing of the supporting documents for industrial design applications (pdf, 138 kB)
Sample supporting documents::
SINGLE INDUSTRIAL DESIGN APPLICATIONS (graphical representation) (doc, 2,3 MB)
MULTIPLE INDUSTRIAL DESIGN APPLICATIONS (colour representation) (doc, 1,3 MB)
Sample industrial design applications for special product types:
COMPOSITE PRODUCT PARTS (in black-and-white photos and with product details shown) (doc, 866 kB)
PRODUCT PARTS (graphical representation) (doc, 315 kB)
INTERMEDIARY PRODUCT (profile etc.) (doc, 375 kB)
PRODUCT WITH A REPETITIVE PATTERN (fabrics, wallpapers, etc.) (doc, 809 kB)
PACKAGING and sections thereof (in colour and graphical representation) (doc, 1,6 MB)
GRAPHICAL SYMBOL (a two-dimensional product) (doc, 185 kB)
SETS OF TYPOGRAPHIC SYMBOLS (doc, 314 kB)
