Designs
Protect what your product looks like
An EU design registration costs €830 all in and covers all 27 member states. It protects the appearance of a product rather than its name or its function.
What a design registration protects
A registered design protects the appearance of a product: its shape, contours, lines, colours, texture, materials and ornamentation. Furniture, packaging, jewellery, tools, textiles, graphic user interfaces and icons are all registrable.
It does not protect the name, which is a trademark, or how the product works, which is a patent. A single product often needs more than one.
What qualifies
The design has to be new and have individual character, meaning it produces a different overall impression on an informed user than designs already available.
Features dictated purely by technical function are excluded. If the shape is the only way to make the thing work, design law will not protect it.
The 12-month grace period
You have twelve months from first disclosing the design publicly to file. Disclose it, test the market, then file within the year and your own disclosure does not count against novelty.
After twelve months your own product launch has destroyed the novelty of your own design. This catches people out constantly. If you launched ten months ago, file now.
How long protection lasts
Five years from filing, renewable in five-year blocks to a maximum of 25 years. Renewal fees rise at each renewal following the 2025 EU design reform.
Unregistered EU design right also exists and lasts three years from first disclosure in the EU, but it only protects against deliberate copying and you have to prove the copying. Registration protects against similar designs whether copied or not.
Send us images of the product and we will tell you what is protectable.
Designs have a 12-month grace period from first disclosure. If you launched recently you may still be in time, but the clock is running.