Scope
1. This Directive applies to:
(a)
design rights registered with the central industrial property offices of the Member States;
(b)
design rights registered at the Benelux Office for Intellectual Property;
(c)
design rights registered under international arrangements which have effect in a Member State;
(d)
applications for the design rights referred to in points (a), (b) and (c).
2. For the purpose of this Directive, design registration shall also comprise the publication following filing of the design with the industrial property office of a Member State in which such publication has the effect of bringing a design right into existence.
Definitions
For the purposes of this Directive, the following definitions apply:
(1)
‘office’ means the central industrial property office of the Member State or the Benelux Office for Intellectual Property, entrusted with the registration of designs;
(2)
‘register’ means the register of designs kept by an office;
(3)
‘design’ means the appearance of the whole or a part of a product resulting from the features, in particular the lines, contours, colours, shape, texture and/or materials, of the product itself and/or of its decoration, including the movement, transition or any other sort of animation of those features;
(4)
‘product’ means any industrial or handicraft item other than a computer program, regardless of whether it is embodied in a physical object or materialises in a non-physical form, including:
(a)
packaging, sets of articles, spatial arrangements of items intended to form an interior or exterior environment, and parts intended to be assembled into a complex product;
(b)
graphic works or symbols, logos, surface patterns, typographic typefaces, and graphical user interfaces;
(5)
‘complex product’ means a product that is composed of multiple components which can be replaced, permitting disassembly and reassembly of the product.
