Today, in the fiercely competitive market, besides the brand, the product’s design and exterior design also play a very important role to help identify and attract customers.
In many cases, we may choose to buy the wrong product because they have too similar exterior designs.
So, if you want to protect the design, packaging, and product design, what procedure should be done?
Please see the article below for more details.
MỤC LỤC BÀI VIẾT
1. What is product design protection?
Product design, or properly called in the legal term, industrial design, is defined as the external appearance of a product, expressed in shapes, lines, colors or a combination of these elements.
The most common industrial designs are: cars, motorbikes, bottles, teapots, phones, tables and chairs, shoes, product packaging designs, etc.
In the newly revised and supplemented Intellectual Property Law in 2022 and effective from the beginning of 2023, the concept of industrial design is further expanded, whereby an industrial design also includes parts to be assembled into products. complex and visible during exploitation and use.
However, in order to have a basis to prove the legal ownership of the industrial design and to have the exclusive right to use such design, the author or the design owner must carry out the procedure of “industrial design exclusive registration” at the Department of Intellectual Property of the Ministry of Science and Technology and granted an industrial design patent.
To better understand the role of industrial design exclusivity, please see the examples below:
Example 1: Surely everyone will immediately think that the car pictured on the left below is a Vespa of Piaggio, but that car is an electric motorbike and not a Vespa of Piaggio:
Because there are so many manufacturers and assemblers of vehicles similar to Piaggio’s Vespa design, Piaggio also asked the authorities to handle it and as a result, the violator was forced to remove the infringing design and was fined and very severe penalty:
Example 2: These are two packages of instant noodles from two different noodle brands, but with the design of the product packaging like this, are we sure we can easily distinguish which noodle package belongs to which brand?
Because of the similarity, these two noodle companies also took each other to Court in 2015 and the result of the survey also concluded that the similar package of Hao Hao noodles caused confusion with Hao Hao, resulting in Hao Hang being forced to design changes, public apology and compensation to Hao Hao.
Example 3: Surely many people go to the bar to call out “bull butts” but they are brought out like this, right? At first glance, it looks like but not the Redbull brand. So, if we put these cans next to each other, can we easily distinguish them?
2. Is registration of an industrial design a mandatory procedure? If not, what’s the problem?
The registration of an industrial design is the right of an enterprise or individual to create or design that industrial design, that is, registration is not required by law.
However, if you already have a product or plan to trade in a product without registering an industrial design, you may face major problems such as:
– Firstly, without an industrial design patent, there is no exclusive right to use that design, which means that anyone can copy the product and have no right to prevent them.
– Second, more dangerous is that anyone can quickly go to register the industrial design of a product with an identical or similar design to you and they have the right to do this because of the consideration for grant of type protection. Industrial design is on the principle that whoever registers first can. And when they are protected, they have the right to reverse you and not let you trade in products that violate the industrial design they have registered.
– Thirdly, this is a situation many people are facing, especially companies that import goods from abroad to sell in Vietnam, suddenly one day they cannot clear customs because there is a request to stop the right holder. Therefore, if you specialize in importing other people’s goods for sale, you should find out if anyone in Vietnam has registered to protect that product and has nothing to do with the agent/partner you import or not.
3. Procedures for registration of industrial design protection
To register an industrial design, you need to prepare documents including:
– 02 declarations according to the form;
– 01 Description of the industrial design, ensuring a complete description of the design features of the product to be registered;
– 04 sets of industrial design photos/drawings showing all technical projections of the product.
Then submit to NOIP and the application will be processed in the order shown as shown below:
Accordingly, the industrial design registration procedure will need to go through several stages of appraisal, have a relatively long processing time, and not every case will be approved.
4. In what cases is an industrial design rejected?
For an industrial design to be approved for protection, several conditions must be met.
The usual cases of rejection are:
– Designs falling into cases that are not considered industrial designs, for example, designs due to mandatory product specifications, products being construction works, products not visible in the market. use process…
– Second, the product design has lost its novelty before the application date, for example, the product has been sold to the market or promoted on the website, facebook…
– Third, Product Designs are not creative, for example designs are only imitations of natural shapes of plants, animals, or assembled from parts of existing designs.
– Fourth, Design cannot be mass-produced into a uniform pattern.
In addition, there are many other conditions, this assessment is not simple and we recommend that you consult a professional lawyer or experts with extensive experience in registration of public design protection such as the CIS Law Firm, before submitting the application, to avoid the time and expense of pursuing an industrial design registration that is ultimately denied.
Thus, as you can see, the application for registration of an industrial design seems simple, but it will also be very difficult for those who have never done it, in addition, the application also needs to go through many stages of appraisal. and there are many cases that cause the application to be refused.
Therefore, for assistance on registration of industrial design protection, you and your friends should quickly contact an IP Attorney with the contact information below:
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY DEPARTMENT – CIS LAW FIRM
109 Hoang Sa, Da Kao Ward, District 1, City. Ho Chi Minh
Phone: 028 3911 8580 – 3911 8581
Email: info@cis.vn – sohuutritue@cis.vn
