Community designs

Experts in Milan in the extension of design applications abroad

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Our team of experts at Brevetti Digiovanni Schmiedt in Milan will support you through the process to extend a design or model application abroad. This can be done for individual countries or through a single procedure, as in the case of Community design.

Community design

A Community design is a design or model valid throughout the European Union (EU), which currently comprises the following 27 states: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Croatia, Czech Rep., Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden.

A Community design is not to be considered a set of independent national designs since it constitutes a unique title granted by the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO, formerly Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market or OHIM, based in Alicante, Spain) and is valid in all EU states. This means that the vicissitudes of design have simultaneous repercussions for all EU countries.
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    EUIPO carries out only a formal examination on the regularity of the registration applications without however carrying out any search for precedence. If the formalities are passed, registration is made in the Register of Designs, the content of which feeds a database accessible to the public. The publication can be immediate or delayed for a maximum of 30 months.

Advantages

Registering a community design allows you to benefit from the following advantages:
  • The exclusive right to use Community design is valid in all EU member countries
  • Centralization in Alicante (Spain) allows the procedures to be simplified considerably through the uniqueness of the registration application, administrative centre and file to be managed
  • As an alternative to filing with the EUIPO, registration applications can be filed with the national industrial property offices
  • With such centralization, the costs are significantly lower than the overall costs necessary for separate registration in all the countries of the European Union or in a plurality of them

Duration

A Community design lasts 5 years from the date the application is filed. This duration can be extended up to a maximum of 25 years by paying a maintenance fee at the end of each 5-year period.
For more details about Community designs, schedule a meeting at our offices at Via Aldrovandi 7 in Milan.
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