The Council and the European Parliament have reached a provisional deal on the revision of the two legislative proposals of the designs package: the directive for the legal protection of designs and the regulation on Community designs. The new texts update the 20-year-old design legislation, aiming to facilitate the protection of industrial designs and adapt EU law in this area to the challenges of a digital and 3D-printing world. The provisional agreement liberalises the spare parts market, establishes the fees to be paid in order to register and renew an EU design, prevents cultural heritage from being registered as design and sets the transposition period for the directive and the review period for the regulation. "Good design is very often what makes consumers choose a car, a chair, a lamp or any other product. Great designers have made our products favourite choices worldwide, but the intellectual property of good design needs to be protected against copies and counterfeiting. The agreement reached today will make it easier, cheaper and faster for designers to protect their creations, even in digital times."
Jordi Hereu i Boher, Spanish Minister for Industry and Tourism Commission proposalAn industrial design constitutes the external appearance of a product. The visual appeal created by a design is one of the key factors influencing a consumer’s preference for one product over another. Good design is an important competitive advantage for producers and adds value to the product. However, designs need to be protected against copies or imitations. The directive and regulation agreed on today update the current legislation from 2002, making it easier to register designs at EU level and ensuring that European and national procedures are harmonised. It also introduces a ‘repair clause’ with new rules regarding exceptions from design protection for spare parts used for repair of complex products, such as cars. Main elements of the agreementThe provisional agreement reached today between the two co-legislators frames the scope of the directive, clarifies the rules of the ‘repair clause’, sets the fees for registering a design and adjusts the transposition period for the directive on design protection. Repair clauseThe provisional agreement clarifies the conditions of the ‘repair clause’. This clause excludes from design protection the replacement parts for a complex product that are used to restore its original appearance but only for repair purposes and if the replacement part looks exactly like the original piece (i.e. a damaged door, or a broken light of a car that should be replaced to make the car look as it was). This clause is intended to liberalise the spare parts market and ensure that more accessible spare parts for repair are available to consumers across the EU. This may create between € 340-544 million in savings for consumers over 10 years. The text agreed on today keeps a balance between the interests of consumers, design holders, and the replacement-parts industry. The agreement adds the ‘repair clause’ to the directive on the legal protection of designs (it was previously included only in the regulation on designs), so there is an alignment between the European designs system (regulation) and the national ones (directive). The agreement lays down a harmonised transitional period of 8 years for the repair clause. Fees and office servicesTo ensure the viable co-existence of national and EU design protection systems, the provisional agreement increases EU-wide fees, which will be higher compared with national-only protection schemes, to reflect the larger territorial scope of the EU-wide design protection. Offices will have the duty to warn designers when the expiry date of their design rights is approaching. Cultural heritageThe agreement forbids that cultural heritage elements of national interest (for instance the traditional costume of a region) could be protected as private designs. To frame the limits of this disposition, the co-legislators agreed on using the UNESCO definition of ‘cultural heritage’. Transposition periodFinally, the co-legislators have agreed that member states will have a period of 36 months to take the necessary measures to transpose the directive for the legal protection of designs. The regulation on EU designs will be applicable throughout the EU once it comes into force. Next stepsThe provisional agreement reached with the European Parliament now needs to be endorsed and formally adopted by both institutions. BackgroundDesign-intensive industries represent almost 16% of GDP and 14% of all jobs in the EU. On 10 November 2020, the Council called on the Commission to present proposals to modernise the EU’s design protection system, which was almost 20 years old. On 28 November 2022, the Commission published a package of measures with two proposals: a regulation amending Council regulation (EC) no 6/2002 on Community designs and a directive on the legal protection of designs (recast of directive 98/71/EC). The Council adopted its position on 25 September 2023. Intellectual property: Council adopts two positions on designs protection legislation (press release, 25 September 2023) General approach directive on the legal protection of designs (recast) General approach on regulation amending Council Regulation (EC) No 6/2002 on Community designs and repealing Commission Regulation (EC) No 2246/2002 Commission’s proposal on Community Designs regulation | 
