Design Rights: Functionality and Scope of Protection, Second Edition

AIPPI Series # 3

About this book:

Design Rights, currently in its second edition, is a detailed country-by-country analysis providing clarity, insight, and guidance on the legal issues and practical implications of functionality in key jurisdictions globally. Protection of industrial and other designs has evolved as an imperative segment of intellectual property law. This book not only furnishes a solid foundation on the law regarding the protection and enforcement of design rights but also focuses on the ubiquitous and controversial issue of functionality in the context of design rights. Albeit there is considerable harmonization on the fundamental principle that design rights regard aesthetic appearance and not underlying technical function, courts and legislatures worldwide have long battled with determining whether to permit and how to interpret the scope of designs rights directed at products whose appearance may, partially or completely, be the result of functional consideration.

What’s in this book:

Extensive experience and in-depth knowledge about design protection in their respective jurisdictions have formed the basis for the careful choice of authors of the country chapters. Every chapter tackles the following topics and issues:

• availability of protection—granting authority, statutory requirements, drawing requirements, and disclaimers;
• tests or approaches applied to determine whether a design right is ineligible for protection based on functionality grounds, including related policy considerations;
• strategies employed to mount, and fend off, challenges to design rights based on functionality;
• determination of a design right’s scope of protection, including the impact of any visual elements of the overall design having appearances that are nonnovel and/or functional;
• tests or approaches applied to determine whether a visual element of a design right is excluded from the overall scope of protection based on functionality grounds, including related policy considerations; and
• examples of how visual elements of a design right whose appearance is driven by function are treated in infringement and validity contexts.

An introductory chapter elucidates the basic tenets of design rights, terminology, and discussion of design rights concerning other areas of intellectual property followed by country chapters, each comprising case law examples, hypothetical fact patterns, and graphic images of designs to bring issues to life. 

How this will help you:

This unique compendium will prove to be of tremendous pragmatic interest not only for the industry involved but also for the public at large. Its thorough comparative analysis and guidance will be highly beneficial to applicants for design protection, parties involved in or contemplating enforcement proceedings, and interested legal practitioners. It will also be highly appreciated as a matchless and comprehensive resource for academics and researchers interested in the international harmonization of intellectual property law.