Filing of Italian, European and international models and designs

The registration of designs and models can be carried out in a variety of ways in the national, EU or international spheres. Even aside from the registration of these rights, it is also possible to hold rights to unregistered designs and models, and also to invoke protection copyright protection over the objects of industrial design. The presence or absence, and type, of registration, greatly affects the duration of protection, which for a registered model can be up to 25 years.

Filing a model or design means protecting the appearance of a product. Once filed and registered, a model or design can be protected not only in the case of deliberate infringement, but also in the case of identical or similar copies that are placed on the market in good faith. Moreover, this advantage is directly connected to the registration of a model or design in one or more EU countries; the right in question can benefit from a unified legal system that offers advantages from both a practical and an economic point of view.

On the contrary, not filing a model or design may have the result of denying it legal status and, therefore, not being able to provide it full protection from infringement in one or more countries of reference. This is an enormous risk, which not only concerns the life of the design in question but also the entire future of the company.