Registering Drawings and Models: Effective Protection for Your Creations
Your products’ appearance assumes strategic importance. This creation, in addition to setting you apart from your competitors, appeals to consumers.
Your products’ appearance represents an element of your corporate capital because it participates in the firm’s commercial success, but also because it is the fruit of financial and human investments.
Whether it expresses a firm’s identity or creative force, whether it supports innovation or simply sets the firm apart from its competitors, industrial design actively contributes to a product’s success and life expectancy. It must therefore be effectively protected.
As defined in industrial property, your products’ appearance is manifested in two-dimensional graphical items, known as drawings, and / or by three-dimensional graphical items, called models. So it is said that the appearance is protected by “drawings and models.”
Interest
By registering a drawing or model with the INPI, you obtain an exclusive right on French territory for a minimum of 5 years, renewable 4 times.
Registering your drawings and models may cover the appearance of a variety of products. This appearance may cover the entire product or a part thereof, in so far is it is characterized by visual elements such as lines, contours, colors, shapes, textures, or the materials used.
You become the only one allowed to use and profit from your creation. You may defend yourself against counterfeiters who copy or imitate it.
By registering your drawings and models, you effectively protect your products’ design, whether industrial or craftwork. You promote your firm’s identity and its creative force.
To gain new markets, you must grant licenses and / or complete Community and international registrations.
In France, drawings and models are covered by a special legal framework, under the “unity of art” theory. So, any industrial object characterized by a specific esthetics, regardless of its use or artistic values, benefits, subject to being original, from copyright protection, in addition to its protection by drawings and models.
The advantage of registering drawings and models is to have double protection (copyrights / industrial property).
By registering an official document attesting to your rights, you can more easily consider extending your protection abroad.
Constraints
The elements you wish to protect must be visible during normal usage of a product by consumers.
A part visible only during maintenance or repairs may not be protected.
Your drawings and models must be new and have a specific character to be protected.
Certain forms may not be protected by drawings and models such as, for example, a drawing or model whose characteristics are imposed by the product’s technical function.
Precautions
To become the owner of a drawing or model, you must register it with the INPI.
If you are not the creator, ensure that you have the rights to the drawings and models before registering.
Ensure that they have not already been registered by someone else. Performing research on existing creations provides for appreciating the novelty, specific character, and legitimacy of your rights.
At the same time, you are assured that your registration does not constitute counterfeiting.
Your creations’ graphic elements (logos, shapes...) may also be protected by trademark registration.