Design Law

You can obtain the protection of designs!

Whether you are a start-up, a small or medium-sized business, a large global corporation or even an amateur artist, protecting your designs and products, particularly if for commercial use, can be crucial and add significant value to your product.

What is a registered design?

It is legal protection in the form of a title, that protects the “design”, the appearance of a product. Assuming that legal requirements of protection are met, the applicable products could range from food packaging, household products, furniture design to vehicle manufacturing.

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Design law is also one of the pillars of fashion and luxury law, since the protection conferred by this title is particularly adapted to fashion creations. As the fashion and clothing sector is particularly competitive, litigation is frequent. Thus, it is important to develop a protection strategy, particularly regarding design law, in order to determine the ownership of rights and to ensure their proper development.

Why register a design?

The appearance of your products represents a major commercial stake. It allows you to differentiate yourself from your competitors and to build your identity.

Designs are industrial property titles that give you a five-year exploitation monopoly on the appearance of your product, renewable every five-years, and for up to twenty-five years.

The appearance of your product can be protected by a design patent, but it can also be protected by copyright, if it meets the originality criterium. This is the combination of copyright and design rights, which is particularly present in the fashion world. Moreover, you can protect your graphic elements as a trademark, such as a logo.

Under what conditions?

To register a design, it must be new and have its own distinctive features. This means that your design cannot look like something that the market has seen before or something that has a common shape. To protect its originality, it is important not to disclose your design before registering it.

In order to ensure that your design is unique, it is essential to conduct a prior rights search. This means that you need to find out if another identical or semi-identical design has already been disclosed or not. If there is one that has been previously disclosed, your creation might not be protected. The Dreyfus team can help you at each step of the protection process of your works.

Our services

  • Expertise in design law, luxury law, fashion law
  • Feasibility studies: availability research, in-depth investigation, reflection on the protection strategy, choice of visuals to be protected
  • Register and renewal before the competent offices (INPI, OMPI, OHMI)
  • Development of a protection strategy concerning the designs that can be protected
  • Legal strategy: protect your rights under both design law and copyright law
  • Management of design portfolio
  • Negotiation and audit of license agreements, assignment, coexistence, …