The design is understood to be the shape, ornamentation or appearance of a product (or part of the product), whether it is two- or three-dimensional. The registration of designs allows protecting their commercial value and only requires that the design be novel and unique. It is not necessary for the design to give the product any functional capacity, nor does a design have a distinctive nature like a trademark does. Jewels, fabrics, fashion designs, furniture, toys, furnishings (chairs, lamps, shelves, tables, etc.), decorative products, computer hardware products, electrical appliances and any other product imaginable which has an aesthetic shape or a typical, unique and novel ornamentation can be protected. The registration of a design grants an exclusive right to the proprietor to market it and it also grants him the right to prohibit any third party from using it without his consent. It is therefore a particularly suitable means for protecting oneself against unfair competition. The registration of the design is granted for a five-year period and can be renewed for successive five-year periods up to a maximum of 25 years. NOTEWORTHY ADVANTAGES AND MODIFICATIONS OF THE NEW LAW Law 20/2003 on the Legal Protection of Industrial Designs was approved on July 7, 2003. The fundamental characteristic of this new Industrial Design Law is that it harmonizes Spanish law with Community law (especially with Regulation (EC) 6/2002).

Diagram of possible incidents during the application process for any design or industrial model.

There is a very interesting novelty in this new Design Law in relation to the term of duration. It provides that the proprietor of a design can test the design on the market for a period of one year before deciding whether or not to register it, and the design will not lose its novelty as a result of that period. This drawback was not resolved by the prior law.

The possibility opened by the new Law is especially valid and interesting for all the fields and activities in which products are frequently changed in very short seasons, such as clothing designs.

The new Design Law also provides the possibility of multiple applications. In other words, a single application can comprise more than one design, up to a maximum of 50.

Another important novelty consists of the possibility of delaying the publication of the design for the purpose of matching up the date on which the product is launched with the publication date of the design. The new Design Law also provides provisional protection for non-registered designs for a 3-year period (which is counted from the date on which the product is first marketed in the European Community) against any imitation of the design.

However, since this protection is provisional (for non-registered designs), protection of the design cannot be extended beyond these 3 initial years, whereas if the proprietor decides to register the design, an initial protection of 5 years is granted, and this protection can be extended up to a maximum of 25 years.

Furthermore, if the proprietor chooses to register the design, he will be able to defend himself against any similar or identical imitation. However, if the design is not registered, protection will be limited in time and will not be as strong since it will only affect the identical imitations, not to mention the problems he may have in submitting evidence of the design.

Taking into account that a good design is any design that was conceived some time ago and yet continues to be admired, economically profitable and useful, i.e., it still has a wide acceptance (transcending trends and novelties), it is advisable to register the design.

In summary, the approval of this new Design Law symbolizes an excellent chance for companies to register any products distinguished from the products of the competition due to their shape, appearance or ornamentation as designs and to therefore be able to protect themselves against imitations and copies.






THE HAGUE AGREEMENT
The international system for filing Industrial Drawings is overseen by The Hague Agreement, dating back to 1925. It entered into force in 1928 and has been revised on several occasions, especially in London (1934 Act) and The Hague (1960 Act).

The system has two objectives. First of all, it offers the possibility of obtaining protection for industrial designs in a group of States by means of a single filing in the International Office of the WIPO.

Second of all, through a single filing, which is effective in several countries, subsequent management of the obtained protection is made considerably easier.

The countries and organizations belonging to the Hague Union are:

AFRICAN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ORGANIZATION (OAPI)	ALBANIA	ARMENIA	BELGIUM	BELIZE
BENIN	BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA	BOTSWANA	BULGARIA	CÔTE D'IVOIRE
CROATIA	DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF KOREA	DENMARK	EGYPT	ESTONIA
EUROPEAN COMMUNITY	FORMER YUGOSLAV REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA	FRANCE	GABON	GEORGIA
GERMANY	GHANA	GREECE	HUNGARY	ICELAND
ITALY	KYRGYZSTAN	LATVIA	LIECHTENSTEIN	LITHUANIA
LUXEMBURG	MALI	MONACO	MONGOLIA	MONTENEGRO
MOROCCO	NAMIBIA	NETHERLANDS	NIGER	OMAN
ROMANIA	SAO TOMÉ AND PRINCIPE	SENEGAL	SERBIA	SINGAPORE
SLOVENIA	SPAIN	SURINAME	SWITZERLAND	SYRIAN ARAB REPUBLIC
TURKEY	UKRAINE

CONCEPT
Protection was instituted for the entire scope of the European Union for “community designs” by means of the entry into force of Regulation (EC) No. 6/2002 of the Council on Community Designs (RCD) in March 2002.

The outer appearance of a product or part of a product resulting from the lines, contours, color, shape, texture or materials of the product itself, or its ornamentation, can be protected as a Community design. The following requirements must be met in order for a drawing to be granted registered design protection and unregistered design protection:

REQUIREMENTS
- VISIBILITY REQUIREMENT
First and foremost, the creation for which protection is sought must consist of the outer appearance of a product, its parts, components or its packaging. Therefore the object of protection must be VISIBLE for the end user during normal use.

- THE EXCLUSION OF DESIGNS SOLELY PERFORMING A TECHNICAL FUNCTION
Furthermore, said appearance may NOT solely perform a TECHNICAL FUNCTION. The features of the appearance cannot be dictated by the technical function that the product performs.

- THE NOVELTY REQUIREMENT
Another requirement that the creation must meet is the NOVELTY requirement. The new Community Design for which protection is sought may not be identical to the appearance of another design which was made public at an earlier time and could be reasonably known in normal trade in the specialized circles of the sector in the European Union. It should be pointed out that works protected by copyright will also be taken into account when analyzing the novelty of the creation.

- THE INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER REQUIREMENT
The creation for which protection is sought as a Community Design must have an INDIVIDUAL character. In fact, the overall impression produced by the new creation on the informed user must differ from the overall impression produced on such a user by any earlier design which it is compared to.

Therefore, in the event that there are earlier designs identical to the new creation (novelty requirement) or which produces the same overall impression (individual character requirement) on the informed user, protection of an outer appearance as a Community Design would be excluded.

Earlier designs which could exclude such protection are listed below as examples:

		a shoe model marketed by an Italian manufacturer in one or several countries of the European Union
		the particular design of a car that has not yet been marketed but that has been described and photographed by a journalist and published in a supplement of a newspaper in Spain or in any other EU country
		lthe particular shape of a coffeemaker displayed in a trade fair in an EU country by a Chinese company
		the new shape of a COCA-COLA ® bottle disclosed only in the United States but which leads to reasonably assuming that it is known in specialized circles of the sector in the EU
		a series of minimalist paintings by a Japanese painter which have caused enormous enthusiasm after having been displayed for several months in the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.

THE DOUBLE PROTECTION SYSTEM
Protection of Community Designs can be obtained in two alternative ways, through registered design or unregistered design protection. In fact, the particular outer appearance of any handicraft or industrial product, as well as its visible parts intended for its assembly in a complex product, games, packaging, graphic symbols, has a double system of protection.

- REGISTERED DESIGN PROTECTION
The primary way to protect these creations is through the registration of the Community Design (for two-dimensional) or three-dimensional creations (i.e. drawings or models, respectively) which can be filed in the Office for Harmonization of the Internal Market (OHIM) located in Alicante, which can be for up to 25 years.

The main advantages of the concept of registered Community Designs are their relatively low cost, the extent of the rights granted, and the simple and unified registration process. In other words, unified and uniform protection is obtained for the entire EU with only one application and a single registration process.

The proprietor of a registered Community Design will have the exclusive right to use his creation and may prohibit third parties from using it without his consent. The possibility of applying for and registering a Community Design that is valid in all the countries of the European Union implies a considerable savings compared to filing and processing individual applications in the different member countries.

- UNREGISTERED DESIGN PROTECTION
The alternative to registering a Community Design consists of the protection granted by the RCD to unregistered Community Designs. The mere creation and subsequent disclosure in the EU grant the author or the company who hired him automatic protection without requiring any process whatsoever.

The main drawback of this protection system is that the proprietor of a Community Design must prove the date of creation and disclosure of his creation with unquestionable evidence in order to establish that it was indeed created before a third party’s infringing design.

An unregistered Community Design will also only have a three-year period of protection as from the date on which it was made public for the first time within the territory of the European Union.

Furthermore, an unregistered Community Design only confers upon its proprietor the right to prevent the use of designs belonging to third parties which imitate his design without his consent. In the event that the third party’s design was the result of an independent work of creation by an author and which leads to reasonably thinking that he was not familiar with the design disclosed by the proprietor, the latter would not obtain protection for his unregistered Community Design.

CONCLUSION
Both registered and unregistered Community Designs have a UNIFORM CHARACTER and cover the territory of the entire European Union. They share the same requirements for protection, such as NOVELTY and the INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER, but the rights that are conferred by the two concepts are clearly different.

REGISTERED Community Designs confer upon their proprietors an exclusive right to use and prohibit the manufacture, the offering, the placement on the market, the importing, the exporting, the use or the storage for said purposes of products incorporating the design and/or not producing a different overall impression, whereas UNREGISTERED COMMUNITY DESIGNS confer the right to prohibit the mentioned types of commercial use of the design only if said use results from having imitated the creation for which protection is sought.

In conclusion, the REGISTRATION OF COMMUNITY DESIGNS in the OHIM allows obtaining a more extended period of protection and it prevents the drawbacks of unregistered design protection discussed in the section. Therefore, considering the relatively low cost, it is highly advisable to register designs in order to protect the results of creative work.