Design Litigation in the EU Member States: Are Overlaps With Other Intellectual Property Rights and Unfair Competition Problematic and Are SMEs Benefiting From the EU Design Legal Framework?

European Law Review, Forthcoming

24 Pages Posted: 2 Oct 2020

See all articles by Oliver Church

Oliver Church

University of Nottingham

Estelle Derclaye

University of Nottingham, School of Law

Gilles Stupfler

École Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Analyse de l'Information (ENSAI)

Date Written: August 17, 2020

Abstract

Genuine overlaps (several intellectual property rights (IPR) applying to the same intellectual effort) create over-protection. There is hardly any empirical legal research done on how claimants have litigated at national level not only on their design rights but also on another IPR or unfair competition. This article fills this gap by examining the decisions on all types of design rights (registered and unregistered) from the courts of the 28 Member States since the entry into force of the Design Directive and Design Regulation until August 2017, where claimants also sued on the basis of another IPR namely patents, utility models, trade marks, copyright, and the tort of slavish imitation. The article also determines the proportion of small and medium-sized enterprises and big companies who litigate and their rate of winning. This gives the extent of the use of the EU design right system by type of company and an indication of its success.

Keywords: Design, Copyright, Patent, Trade Mark, Unfair Competition, Overlap, Statistics, SME, Litigation EU Law

Suggested Citation

Church, Oliver and Derclaye, Estelle and Stupfler, Gilles, Design Litigation in the EU Member States: Are Overlaps With Other Intellectual Property Rights and Unfair Competition Problematic and Are SMEs Benefiting From the EU Design Legal Framework? (August 17, 2020). European Law Review, Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3675732 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3675732

Oliver Church

University of Nottingham

University Park
Nottingham, NG8 1BB
United Kingdom

Estelle Derclaye (Contact Author)

University of Nottingham, School of Law ( email )

Nottingham NG7 2RD
United Kingdom

HOME PAGE: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/law2/staff/estelle.derclaye

Gilles Stupfler

École Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Analyse de l'Information (ENSAI)

Rennes Métropole - Campus de Ker Lann
Rue Blaise Pascal
BP 37203- 35172 BRUZ Cedex
France

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics

Downloads
342
Abstract Views
1,195
Rank
147,261
PlumX Metrics