The presentation summarises the presenter’s recent research which empirically examines the substantive decisions on all types of design rights from the courts of the 28 Member States since the entry into force of the Design Directive and the Design Regulation, up to and including August 2017. The research uses descriptive and inferential statistics to analyse the presence of differences in the proportion of designs found to be valid and infringed as a function of the level of the courts, the type of design right, the dimension of design and the level of specialisation of the judges. The research finds that overall the EU design system has been effective and suggests further possible improvements.
Speaker: Prof. Estelle DERCLAYE - University of Nottingham