The International Design System Family

This article was included in our Spring/Summer 2011 edition of Inside IP magazine.

Two new countries have recently signed up to the Geneva Act of the Hague Agreement, the system by which registered design protection can be obtained in multiple designated countries through a single application filed at WIPO (the World Intellectual Property Office).

The new countries are Finland, which deposited its instrument of accession on 1st February 2011 and for which the Geneva Act came into force on 1st May 2011, and Monaco, which deposited its instrument of ratification on 9th March 2011 and for which the Geneva Act will come into force on 9th June 2011.

The addition of these  two countries takes the total number of states that can be designated in an International Design application to 41.  Although many European states are included in this total and can be designated individually, it is worth remembering that the European Community can also be designated as a single entity in order to obtain protection in all 27 states of the EU via a Registered Community Design.

In addition to the continually increasing number of member countries, the popularity of the International Design Registration system under the Hague Agreement is also evidenced by the statistics released by WIPO for the number of filings received in 2010 over those for 2009.  Overall, filings were up an impressive 32% on the 2009 figure, to 2,382 filings.  It is also worth noting that, of these 2,382 filings, 2,216 were registered and resulted in 11,238 individual designs being recorded, an average of just over 5 designs per application, showing that applicants are increasingly aware and taking advantage of the cost-effective nature of the International Design Registration system for obtaining protection for multiple designs in a single unitary application.

To quote the Director General of WIPO, Francis Gurry, “Designs are a valuable means of product differentiation, often determining the success of one product over a comparable one.  While many companies invest large sums of money and expertise to develop winning designs, good designs can also be developed at low cost and provide a high return on investment”.  In view of the many benefits of registered design protection, such as the quick and cost-effective process of registration, we continue to encourage all of our clients to seriously consider the competitive advantage that registered design protection could offer to their businesses and to include registered designs as an important part of their IP portfolio.

Alex Brown 24 May 2011

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