NEW GERMAN DESIGN ACT
Dr. Elisabeth Vorbuchner, LL.M., Zanker & Vorbuchner, Augsburg, Germany
Verifier: Dr. Utz Kador, Kador & Partner, Munich, Germany

With the new German Design Act which has entered into force on June 1, 2004, EU Directive 98/71/EC has finally been implemented into German Law after a delay of more than two years.

As the aim of the Directive was to harmonize design protection within the European Union as far as possible, the new German Design Act in several regards is similar to the Community Design Regulation which entered into force already April 1, 2003.

The most important aspects of the new Act are:

• extension of the period of protection to 25 years
• protection of spare parts is still possible in contrast to the Community Design
• lower threshold for protection
• extension of the grace period from 6 months to 12 months
• multiple applications with up to 100 designs (instead of the previous 50)
• in contrast to the Community Design no unregistered right is available.