Industrial designs in Cyprus.
Industrial designs in Cyprus.
What is an industrial design.
An industrial design constitutes the ornamental aspect of an article. It may consist of three-dimensional features, such as the shape of an article, or two-dimensional features, such as patterns, lines or colour. A wide variety of industry products can be protected by industrial designs including packages, containers, textiles, jewellery, furnishing, graphic symbols, logos, graphical user interfaces (GUI) etc.
The owner of an industrial design has the right to prevent third parties from making, selling, or importing articles bearing or embodying a design which is a copy or substantially a copy of the protected design, when such acts are undertaken for commercial purposes.
An industrial design needs to be registered in order to be protected under industrial design law as a ‘registered design’. The filing of an industrial design is initially for a period of five years, which may be renewed for four additional periods of protection of five years each, with a maximum period of protection of 25 years from the date of filing.
Based also on the EU Regulation No 6/2002, a design can be protected by an unregistered community design for a period of 3 years as from the date on which the design was first made available to the public within the Community. The requirements for protection are the same for both registered and unregistered designs.
The registration and protection of industrial designs in Cyprus is governed by the Law on the Legal Protection of Industrial Designs (Law 4(I)/2002).
Is your design registerable?
In order for a design to be registered, it must meet certain prerequisites, and particularly to be new and unique.
Novelty
A design shall be considered to be new if no identical design has been made available to the public (a) in the case of an unregistered community design, before the date on which the design for which protection is claimed has first been made available to the public, and (b) in the case of a registered design, before the date of filing of the application or if priority is claimed, the date of priority. Designs shall be deemed to be identical if their features differ only in immaterial details.
Individual character
A design shall be considered to have individual character if the overall impression it produces on the informed user differs from the overall impression produced on such a user by any design which has been made available to the public (a) in the case of an unregistered community design, before the date on which the design for which protection is claimed has first been made available to the public and (b) in the case of a registered design, before the date of filing the application or if priority is claimed, the date of priority.
Law or morality
Moreover, an industrial design must not conflict law or morality, or the way which a product operates or component parts of a product which however are not visible during normal use of the product.
Applying for a national registered design
Once you verified that a design meets all the prerequisites for protection, you may submit an application for filing in Cyprus accompanied by:
– stylisation of each design or model applied for;
– the completed form of appointment or change of authorised person for services (form ΒΣΥ5) if the applicant has no residence or registered office in Cyprus;
– the fee of 85 euros and forty-three cent (€85,43) and the fee for the first five-year protection period which amounts to fifty-one euro and twenty-six cent (€51,26); and
– the publication fee of sixty-eight euros and thirty-four cent (€68,34), in case where the publication is requested in point 8 of the said form; or
– the fee of forty-two euros and seventy-two cent (€42,72) in case of a postponement of the publication.
Certificate of filing
Provided that your application is complete at the stage of formal examination, the Department of Registrar of Companies and Intellectual Property proceeds with the issuance of the relevant Certificate of Filing of an Industrial Design and subsequently proceeds to a relevant publication in the Official Gazette of the Republic.
It is clarified that the Intellectual Property Section does not make a substantive examination of the application and therefore the acceptance of the filing of an Industrial Design does not constitute a decision from Section regarding the ability of the Industrial Design to be protected pursuant to the Law.
Do you need more info?
For more information on industrial designs drop us an email here!
Chrystalla Psyllou- Advocate
