Protection of design work
For companies manufacturing products according to sketches developed by designers, an important issue is protection of designers' work. This issue may be important in various industries, for example, manufacturing of furniture, textile industry, manufacturing of packaging, etc. Legislation provides for the possibility to protect a designer's work by registering it as an industrial design. Hence it is possible to protect the external image of any relevant product, issuing from the specific character of a product or its decoration (e.g. form of a chair or bottle, decor on fabric).
In order to register a design as an industrial design, the latter should meet two main criteria 's namely, the design should be new and have an individual character. The criterion of novelty requires not making public the relevant design work prior to the date of submitting an application for registration 's i.e. it may not be demonstrated in exhibitions, put into production or for sale or otherwise made public.
So immediately after the development of a new design it should be decided whether it is necessary to protect it in order to ensure exclusive rights for oneself to manufacture products of such design. However, making a design public does no harm if it is made public by the designer himself or an authorized person within one year prior to the submission date of an application. Such a requirement applies for the registration of design in Lithuania and Latvia.
The individual character criterion means that the relevant design work should have something different compared with design works already known publicly.
There are also limits to registration. It is not possible to register as an industrial design the external image of a product, which contradicts public policy or public moral, as well as the one that depends only on technical functions of the product.
The rights to a design belong to the designer, that is, to the author of a design who may apply for registration of an industrial design in his name. The situation is different if a design is developed during an employment relationship and the employment agreement gives all rights to the employer. When hiring a designer an employer should ensure that an employment or other agreement stipulates the right of the employer to industrial designs created by the designer during the employment relationship.
The situation may be difficult if an industrial design has been developed by several persons jointly. In such cases an industrial design should be regarded as common property, and exercise of the rights may be difficult. Therefore, all authors should conclude a written agreement on the use of industrial design and division of royalties.
Industrial designs are registered by national bodies for registering industrial property. In the Baltics this is done by the local patent office. For registration it is necessary to submit pictures that provide a clear and complete view of the specific characteristics of the industrial design, as well as several other documents and to pay stamp duties.
In Latvia, local residents and companies may choose to apply to the patent office themselves, while foreign applicants should hire a local professional authorized person. In Estonia, foreigners can only submit the application themselves. For other procedures related to registration or prolonging the validity of an industrial design, a patent attorney must be hired. In Lithuania, foreign nationals who are not permanent residents in Lithuania or another EU member state, and legal persons of foreign states who do not have a subsidiary or representation registered in Lithuania or are not established in another EU member state or do not have a subsidiary or representation registered in other EU member state shall file applications at the local patent offices and perform all actions related to the registration of the design with the State Patent Bureau, including also representation at the Appeals Division, through a patent attorney of Lithuania.
A registered industrial design grants exclusive right to its owner to use the industrial design in a way preferable to him and to prohibit other persons from manufacturing, selling, advertising and using products in which the industrial design of the owner is implemented or included. If somebody else wishes to use a registered industrial design, he or she must receive a licence. However, the fact that an industrial design has been registered does not necessarily mean that the rights of registered owners to such industrial design may not be contested. The law provides the possibility for third parties to contest in the Patent Office or court the registration of an industrial design.
