Industrial design

INDUSTRIAL DESIGN

Industrial design shall be the appearance of the whole or a part of a product, resulting from its features, in particular the lines, contours, colors, shape, texture and/or material the product is composed of and its ornamentations.

The product shall mean any industrial or handicraft product, including parts intended to be assembled into a complex product, product packaging, get-up, graphic symbols and typographic typefaces, excluding computer programs.Therefore, for it to be an industrial design, the product must be suitable for industrial or craft production.

The holder of the industrial design rights shall have the exclusive right to use the registered industrial design and to prevent any third party not having his consent from using it.

The use shall include: making, offering, putting on the market, importing, exporting or using the product containing the design or a product to which the design has been applied or stocking such a product for those purposes

The holder of industrial design rights may not prevent other person from performing the following activities:

1) Activities performed for private, non-commercial and experimental purposes;

2) Reproduction for the purpose of making citations or teaching, provided such activities are compatible with the fair business practices and provided they do not unduly jeopardize the normal exploitation of the industrial design, as well as provided that the source from which the industrial design has been obtained has been specified.

The right to the industrial design protection shall be vested in the designer, or his legal successor.

A person providing only technical assistance in the process of creating a design shall not be considered a designer.

If two or more persons jointly created a design, all designers shall be entitled to industrial design protection rights.

If the design has been developed by a person while performing his/her regular work related activities or when acting on order and instructions of their employer, the employer shall be entitled to file an application unless otherwise stipulated in the contract.

A Design may be protected if it is new and has an individual character.

A design shall be considered new if no identical design has been made available to the public prior to the design registration application filing date or if the priority right was claimed prior to the date of registered priority right.

A design shall be considered to have individual character if the overall impression it produces on the informed user differs from the overall impression produced on such a user by any other design which has been made available to the public prior to the registration application filing date or if the priority right was claimed prior to the date of registered priority right.

However, the novelty and individual character of the design are not examined during the design registration process, but they should be considered since a claim for invalidation of the design can be filed with the competent court on these grounds.

The protection of industrial design rights shall last for five years commencing from the application filing date and shall be subject to renewal periods of five years, not to exceed twenty five years.

INDUSTRIAL DESIGN REGISTRATION PROCEDURE

A design is protected in accordance with the Law on Legal Protection of Industrial Designs ("Official Gazette of Montenegro", Nos. 80/10, 27/13, 42/16, 2/17, and 84/24), while the Rulebook on the Procedure for Recognition, Changes, and Renewal of Industrial Design Validity ("Official Gazette of Montenegro", No. 12/12) regulates the detailed content and manner of maintaining the Industrial Design Register and records of industrial design applications, the detailed content of requests and applications for design registration, the detailed content of requests for the separation of multiple applications and the documentation submitted with the request, the detailed content of the data from the design registration decision published in the official intellectual property gazette, the detailed content of requests for the entry of changes in the Register and the documentation submitted with the request, and the detailed content of requests for the renewal of design protection and the documentation submitted with the request.

The industrial design registration procedure shall be initiated by filing an application to the Ministry of Economic Development.

The industrial design registration application and documentation shall not be available to the public without the applicant’s consent prior to the industrial design disclosure date.

The application can be individual (for one design) or multiple (for several different designs). The condition for submitting a multiple application is that all designs in the application must relate to products that belong to the same class of the International Classification for Industrial Design (the so-called Locarno Classification).

The International Classification for Industrial Design (Locarno Classification), established by the Locarno Agreement (1968), is used in the design registration procedure and includes 32 classes of products. The full content of the Locarno Classification can also be found on the pages of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO/OMPI) https://locpub.wipo.int/enfr//

The application shall include:

1) Industrial design registration request;

2) Information about the applicant;

3) The industrial design depiction (appearance) suitable for reproduction;

4) Indication of the product containing the design or to which the design will be applied;

5) Information on the authorized representative if the applicant has a representative;

6) Information on the joint authorized representative in case of joint applications.

In addition to data referred to this information the application may contain the following:  Product appearance description or sample;  Request to defer the registered industrial design publication; Product classification according to the International Classification prescribed by the Locarno Agreement on Establishing International Classification of Industrial Designs: Information about the designer or a team of designers or statement made by the designer or team of designers that he/she or they do not wish to be listed in the application;

Proof of payment of administrative fees and duties shall be submitted with the application.

The administrative fee for recognizing a design, if the application contains one design, is €15.00, and if the application contains two or more designs, an additional €12.00 is paid for each subsequent design. The account for paying administrative fees is: 832-3161910-97.

INTERNATIONAL REGISTRATION PROCEDURE

The international industrial design registration shall be done in accordance with the Hague Agreement.

The application for international industrial design registration shall be filed directly to the International Bureau of the World Intellectual Property Organization (hereinafter referred to as: the International Bureau).

The international industrial design registration fees shall be payable directly to the International Bureau.

More information on international design registration can be found on the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) website www.wipo.int/en/web/hague-system/