Design

By registering your design, you protect the shape and appearance of your product. The protection covers the overall visual impression and includes lines, contours, colours, shapes and structure. This could for instance be an unusually shaped bottle.

What it requires to register your design

Your design must be new

The novelty requirement means that you cannot protect a design if identical or very similar designs already exist.

Your design must be special

Your design has to have ‘individual character’, i.e. characteristics which distinguishes the design from other designs. This means that the overall impression of your design must clearly differentiate itself from other previously known products.

Gain advantages by protecting your design

Design protection prevents copies

A design registration can prevent others from copying your work. If someone tries to violate your right, you have a more solid position with a registered design.

Design protection increases security for investors

A registered design provides your business partners and investors with a higher level of security against infringement. A registered design also indicates that your product is unique, making it easier to raise funding.

Design protection secures your own investment

Before you invest in marketing and production, you should research whether your design can be protected or not. If you fail to do your research thoroughly and other parties can prove you are violating their rights, you risk having to withdraw your product or change it.

By protecting your design you have the possibility to trade with your right

To make money from your design, you do not have to produce it yourself. If you have a registered right, you have the possibility to sell your right or license it to others in exchange for a fee.

Proof of date gives you better protection

From the time when you display your design in public you have a grace period of 12 months before you must apply for design protection. This gives you the opportunity to test your idea before you decide if it needs to be protected.

With a proof of date, you are able to prove when you first developed the design. The proof of date can be used to document that you were the first one to come up with the design. (link to DesDoc).

What types of designs can be protected?

A design is a product or a part of a product. It can be a three-dimensional form of the product itself or a part of it, such as the leg of a chair. It can also be a two-dimensional decoration of the product, such as a pattern. Design protection can be given to virtually anything that has an appearance and can be represented visually. For example, it is possible to protect the packaging of a product, product details, fonts, shapes, patterns etc. However, your design must have a permanent shape to be registered, which means that you cannot protect liquids, lotions, etc.