Design and Model

Design protection is a title to intellectual property that serves to protect the aesthetic aspect of a product. 

Disclosure of the design prior to the application being lodged may cause it to fall into the public domain and prevent all possibility of its future appropriation.

Once the first application for design protection has been filed, the applicant has a period of 6 months from the filing date of that first application to protect it abroad.  
Several “routes” for extending the protection are possible: national, regional, and/or international. These are not mutually exclusive and may be combined according to strategic and financial considerations.

The national design 
This protection is obtained on a country- by-country basis. The application for registration is filed with the Design Protection Office of the country in question. In each Member State, the procedure is specific and results in the issuance of a national certificate of model registration, totally independent of titles obtained in other Member States. 

The Registered Community Design (RCD) 
This is a unitary title, delivered following a single procedure, and which confers uniform protection across the entire territory of the European Union. The registered community design is managed by EUIPO (the European Union Intellectual Property Office, or OUEPI in French). 

This system has the advantage of reducing costs, and considerably simplifying the registration procedure and the future management of the design.

I’ve applied for a design protection, what are my rights?