With effect as of 1 October 2001 the new Registered Designs Act comes into force in Denmark.

The Act implements an EU directive on the subject and has resulted in an amendment of the previous legislation on design registration, which at the same time will be repealed.

The previous Act on Registered Designs and the Copyright Act contain provisions on the aesthetic and artistic parts of a product - popularly: the appearance of the product. The new Registered Designs Act will take over from the previous act in this system and is thus to protect the aesthetic parts of a product.

Design is defined as "the appearance of a product or part of a product which is identified by the special features of the product itself or by its decoration, especially with respect to lines, contours, colours, shape, texture and/or material".

In order to register a design right the design must be new and have an individual character. Thus a design right may not be registered if an identical design already exists.

What is new is that now it is possible to register a part of a product separately. Thus if one’s new product has a special feature, one may apply to have this feature registered separately pursuant to the Registered Designs Act, even though the feature does not constitute a product in itself.

A design is protected through registration with the Danish Patent and Trademark Office. As a starting point the protection still applies for 5 years, however, it may be renewed for 5-year periods. What is new is that through such 5-year periods the protection may be extended for up to 25 years. As for the duration of the protection a shorter maximum protection period of 15 years applies to design for a component used in the repair of a composite in order that the product returns to its original appearance. This rule is especially significant with regard to spare parts for cars.

Computer software is not protected pursuant to the Registered Designs Act. However, computer software may be protected pursuant to the Copyright Act, as has been the case up to now.

The long-term plan is that a future EU directive is to facilitate design registration which applies to the entire European Union simultaneously. However, this is not yet possible - not even with this new Registered Designs Act.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.