On 18 November 2024, the EU Design Legislative Reform Package was published in the Official Journal of the European Union. The underlying directive and regulation will come into force on 8 December 2024 and Member States will have 36 months to transpose the directive into national law. The implementation of amendments under the regulation will be phased; most amendments will take effect four months after its entry into force (Phase I), while provisions requiring further development through secondary legislation will take effect after 18 months (Phase II).

Aside from replacing references to “Community” with “European Union”, there are some significant changes, and we have set out some below. 

• Definition of “design” – the definition of design has been expanded to include animation by “including the movement, transition or any other sort of animation of those features”. 
• Definition of “product” – this has been updated to explicitly include non-physical items (to cover digital products), but also “spatial arrangements of items intended to form an interior or exterior environment” which could include, for example, shop layouts. 
• Rights conferred – the rights conferred have been more closely aligned with those conferred by EU and national trade marks, including also now being able to prevent counterfeit products from transiting through EU territory or being placed in another customs situation without being released for free circulation in the internal market. The scope of the exclusive rights conferred by a design has also been adjusted to extend to 3D printing.
• Repair clause (for spare parts) – component parts of complex products will not enjoy EU design protection if they are solely used for repairing purposes aimed at restoring the original appearance of the product, where the appearance of the component part is dependent on that of the complex product. 
• Design notice – similarly to copyright or registered trade marks, proprietors will be able to display a design notice on their products (Ⓓ).
• Unity of class – the restriction on filing multiple designs to that of products of the same Locarno class has been removed. Therefore, it will be possible to file multiple designs (up to 50) in the same application regardless of the Locarno Classes required allowing proprietors to benefit from the bulk discount.

The list above does not encompass all the changes introduced by the EU Design Legislative Reform Package but provides a glimpse of what to expect. Whilst clearly modernising and encapsulating technical advancements, many of the changes seem to align EU design rights more closely with EU trade marks.

It will be interesting to see if this prompts any changes to the UK design legislation, which is governed by the Registered Designs Act 1949 (as amended). For example, the definitions of “design” and “product” under UK law currently mirror those of the EU law (at the time of writing, but soon to be previous), and therefore similar arguments for their revision are applicable.