INDUSTRIAL DESIGN PATENTING
RF Civil Code, Part Four, “Chapter 72. Patent Law” shall govern relations arising in connection with legal protection and use of inventions, utility models and industrial designs.
One should be guided by the following while applying for Industrial Design :
What is an Industrial Design and how can you patent your design solution as an Industrial Design?
Here is a brief plan for patenting Industrial Designs:
- Carrying out preliminary design search;
- Preparing a design application;
- Filing the application in the Patent Office ;
- Examination of the claimed industrial design at the Patent Office and establishing its conformity to the patentability requirements;
- Patent grant .
Industrial design patents are granted for an artistic engineering embodiment of an article, produced commercially or handcrafted, that forms its exterior, i.e. the design appearance of the article. Industrial designs may be three-dimensional or flat, e.g. a packaging, a tag, a logo or a type as well as composite products, separate parts that can be assembled into a composite article, etc.
When preparing a design application , one should keep in mind that the image of the exterior of the article is the key document, as it contains all the information about the claimed industrial design. It should be precise, clear and provide the idea and the details of the exterior of the article. Certain elements of the industrial design on the picture should be seen clearly not only at from the illuminated side but also from at the shadowed sides. Additionally, the images should be presented as consistent with the title of the industrial design and its purpose. For instance, when a packaging is being patented one should provide the picture of the packaging – not a typographic display.
Prior to filing an application in the Patent Office , it would be wise to conduct preliminary search to assess the possibility and expediency of patenting your article as an industrial design.
An industrial design patent application should contain a request for the grant of a patent, description of the industrial design , representations of the article and a list of essential features ( Claims ), which, along with the picture of the article, are supposed to determine the scope of legal protection, provided by the patent. In case there are several embodiments of the same article united by the single author's concept/author's style the Applicant is entitled to file one design application comprising multiple embodiments (variants) of the same article design.
To qualify as protectable , the design must comply with the patentability requirements, in compliance with which an industrial design should be innovative and original. To verify whether an industrial design meets the aforesaid requirements, an examination is carried out at the Patent Office, upon the completion of which the search for similar artistic engineering solutions is performed.
In the event of confirming the compliance of the claimed industrial design characterized by a number of essential features, which have been reflected in the images and the list submitted by the Applicant, with all the patentability requirements , the Patent Office adopts a decision of allowance of the design with the claimed list of essential features. Otherwise the Patent Office refuses to grant a patent and such decision may be appealed against in the Chamber for Patent Disputes in the prescribed order.
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The term of design patenting is approximately 12 months.
To file a design application we need 8 clear representations of each variant , the Power of Attorney (simply signed , see below), full details about the Applicant (address, full name, nationality, etc.) and a brief description of design in respect of which the registration is being claimed.
