The appearance of a product or a part thereof, resulting in particular from the features of the lines, contours, colours, shape, surface struc-ture and/or materials of the product itself and/or its ornamenta-tion, may be protected as a design.
Almost any industrial or craft item can be eligible for a design right: Products, com-posite products, parts of products, logos, icons, product packag-ing, typefaces, graphics, trade dress, ornamentation, maps, web design.
There are two criteria for protection of a de-sign: It must be new at the time of the applica-tion and it must have individual character. However, these re-quirements are not examined in the regis-tration procedure, but only in the context of possible nullity or in-fringement proceed-ings.
With the registration of the design, the owner obtains the exclusive right to use the regis-tered design or anoth-er design that does not create a different overall impression on the so-called informed user.