On 28 November 2022, the European Commission published two package proposals to revise both the Design Directive and the Community Design Regulation.
The revision aims to ensure that design protection is (i) fit for purpose in the digital age and (ii) that it is more accessible and efficient by simplifying registering procedures and reducing administrative burden.
- Modernization of existing provisions
These modernizations were made to clarify things in terms of scope and limitations in order to make them fit for the digital age and for future technological developments (such as NFTs, 3D printing and the metaverse).
For example, the following definitions have been extended and broaden the scope of protection :
- “Design” will also extend to the movement, transition, or any other sort of animation of the features of the appearance of a product;
- “Product” will also include such things as digital products and the spatial arrangement of interior environments. It will also include animation, maps and fonts.
- Simplification of the process of registering designs
There will, for example, be a simplification of the requirements to represent the design, so that even if, at the date of the request, some documents are missing, the design can still be registered on that date, provided that the representation of the design is clear enough.
- Addition of permissible uses of a design
The new legislations consider now “referential use” and “critique and parody” as permissible uses of a design and therefore enshrined the existing case law (see the “Deckmyn” case of the ECJ (C-201/13) on the parody exception in copyrights law and the “Simple Living” case of the Court of the Hague (4 May 20211 NO.KG ZA 11-294) concerning the incorporation of a Community design-protected pattern owned by Louis Vuitton on a painting) into legislative instruments.