Judgment_paragraph 40 · Cezar Przedsiębiorstwo Produkcyjne Dariusz Bogdan Niewiński v Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (Trade Marks and Designs) (OHIM) (T-39/13)

40In that regard, it must be emphasised that visibility is an essential criterion for the protection of Community designs: recital 12 in the preamble to Regulation No 6/2002 states that protection should not be extended to those component parts which are not visible during normal use of a product; nor should it be extended to any features of such a part which are not visible when the part is mounted. It follows that it is not necessary, for the purposes of the present analysis, to determine whether the recesses which the contested design is supposed to cover are located in a ‘product’ in the strict sense of Article 3 of Regulation No 6/2002; rather, it is necessary to determine which features are visible during normal use, as the Board of Appeal has done in the present case.