Title II, Section 2, Article 12 · Regulation (EU) 2026/715

Contents

Article 12Commencement and term of protection of an unregistered EU design#

1.A design which meets the requirements laid down in Section 1 shall be protected by an unregistered EU design for a period of three years from the date on which the design was first made available to the public within the Union.

2.For the purposes of paragraph 1, a design shall be deemed to have been made available to the public within the Union if it has been published, exhibited, used in trade or otherwise disclosed in such a way that, in the normal course of business, those events could reasonably have become known to the circles specialised in the sector concerned, operating within the Union. The design shall not, however, be deemed to have been made available to the public for the sole reason that it has been disclosed to a third person under explicit or implicit conditions of confidentiality.

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Defined terms · 4

Show every defined term

complex product
means a product that is composed of multiple components which can be replaced, permitting disassembly and reassembly of the product.
design
means the appearance of the whole or a part of a product resulting from the features, in particular the lines, contours, colours, shape, texture and/or materials, of the product itself and/or of its decoration, including the movement, transition or any other sort of animation of those features;
earlier right
means a right acquired or applied for in good faith before accession.
product
means any industrial or handicraft item, other than a computer program, regardless of whether it is embodied in a physical object or materialises in a non-physical form, including: