Design right (intellectual property)

You can protect a design, drawing, or a combination of both by registering the design. Design registration enables you to protect your design or drawing from anyone who wants to use, abuse, or copy it without your authorisation.

What is covered by design right?

• A drawing can be a pattern or a design.
• A design relates to the appearance of a product (such as lines, contours, colours, shapes, textures, or the material of products themselves or their ornamentation).

To qualify for registration, your design or drawing must be new (novel) and have its own individual character. It cannot strongly resemble an existing design. To find out whether an identical or very similar design has already been registered, you can check the following resources:

• BOIP’s Benelux Designs Register
• Design View (for the EU)
• WIPO’s Global Design database (international)
• Professional literature, magazines, and on the internet.

Registering your design or drawing

If you want to claim the design right for your product, you have to register your design, drawing, or a combination of both.

Design right for the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg

To claim your design right for the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg (the Benelux), you can register your design at the Benelux Office for Intellectual Property (BOIP). A design registration at BOIP remains valid for 5 years, and can be extended for 5-year periods, up to a maximum of 25 years.

Design right in the entire EU

To claim your design right for the entire EU, you can apply for a Registered Community Design (RCD) at the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO).

The EU also has the Unregistered Community Design (UCD). This design right does not have to be registered, it is automatically created on the date on which you make the design available to the general public. From that date, it will be protected for a 3-year period. To prove that your design existed on a specific date, you can register it in i-DEPOT.

Read more about the differences between the RCD and the UCD on the EUIPO website.

Design right outside the EU

For design right in countries other than the EU, you can apply for global protection for your design at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Or you can contact the authority for intellectual property in the relevant country. In your application, you indicate the specific countries in which you want to protect your design.

Cost Calculator for the protection of Intellectual Property

You can calculate how much it costs to register a trademark, design, or idea in the Calculator for Protection of Intellectual Property.