On 2 March 2018, the President of the Dutch-language Commercial Court of Brussels (Voorzitter van de Nederlandstalige rechtbank van koophandel te Brussel/Président du tribunal de commerce néerlandophone de Bruxelles – the "Court") granted Obumex, a manufacturer of luxury kitchens and other furniture, injunctive relief for infringement of unregistered design rights and copyright.

The dispute arose after a construction company (the "Defendant") published pictures of a kitchen designed by Obumex together with an architect in its own leaflet on 4 October 2016. Obumex claimed that the kitchen, as well as the bookcase, the fireplace and the lighting elements forming part of the same project, were protected by unregistered design rights and copyright. Hence, it sought an injunctive relief against the Defendant.




The Court recalled that unregistered design rights do not require prior registration to provide protection.

The Court then went on to examine whether the kitchen, the bookcase, the fireplace and the lighting elements each satisfied the requirements of novelty and individual character. To that end, the Court assessed whether the overall impression produced by these designs was different from that of any design which had previously been made available to the public. It concluded that these designs were original, partly because the Defendant did not provide evidence proving otherwise. Given that Article 85, paragraph 2, of Regulation 6/2002 on Community Designs provides for a presumption of validity of unregistered designs, it was for the party challenging the validity of the unregistered design to come up with supporting evidence.

Having concluded to the originality of the designs at stake, the Court then verified whether the Defendant infringed the intellectual property rights of Obumex.

Relying on the three-year validity of unregistered designs and the date on which the designs at stake were first made available to the public (i.e., 11 September 2014), the Court concluded that Obumex' unregistered designs were valid until 10 September 2017, i.e., after the release of the Defendant's leaflet. The Court then found that a simple comparison between the protected designs and the designs shown in the Defendant's leaflet showed an infringement of the copyright and unregistered design right of Obumex.

The Court therefore granted the injunctive relief together with a penalty payment.

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