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"Preface" [2018] ELECD 1012; in Kur, Annette; Levin, Marianne; Schovsbo, Jens (eds), "The EU Design Approach" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018) viii

Book Title: The EU Design Approach

Editor(s): Kur, Annette; Levin, Marianne; Schovsbo, Jens

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN: 9781785364136

Section Title: Preface

Number of pages: 2

Extract:

Preface The European Union (EU) constitutes an important exception to the general legislative disinterest in design protection and the traditional either copyright or patent style protection approach. Following a Directive from 1998 and a Regulation in 2001 all EU countries have thus provided for harmonized national systems for the protection of design alongside a pan-EU design protection scheme. The EU design legislation is based on a truly unique concept for the protection for designs: The Design Approach. The Design Approach is aimed at defining and demarcating the unique place for industrial design in the spectrum of intellectual property law, allowing the legislator to overcome the copyright v. patent approach dilemma. To do so the EU model combined well known concepts with true legal innovations such as the Unregistered Community Design and novel protection criteria such as individual character. The EU design system and its `third way' between traditional concepts has now been in place for over a decade and a body of case law is slowly emerging from the EU courts and from national jurisprudence. The combination of a brand new legal model for the protection of a whole class of products and national and EU case law represents a unique opportunity to observe law in the making ab initio. Examining the system that is unfolding literally before our eyes thus not only provides valuable insights into the working and development of design law as a discrete field of law but in the making of law as such. In ...