CIPIL Evening Webinar: ‘Design Litigation in the EU Member States: Are Overlaps with other Intellectual Property Rights and Unfair Competition Problematic?’

Speaker: Professor Estelle Derclaye, University of Nottingham

Biography: Estelle holds degrees in law from the University of Liège (Licence en droit; Diplome d'Etudes Specialisées en droit), The George Washington University (LLM) and London (PhD). She was awarded a Fulbright grant as well as Rotary and Baker & McKenzie scholarships to study for her LLM in the USA. She joined the University of Nottingham as a lecturer in 2006, became Associate Professor and Reader in Intellectual Property Law in 2009 and Professor of Intellectual Property Law in 2012. Before joining Nottingham, she practiced intellectual property in an international law firm in Brussels and prior to that, she was a lecturer at the Universities of Leicester and London (Queen Mary). Her main interests lie in intellectual property law, in particular copyright and designs law, IP overlaps and IP and well-being. From 2008 to 2010, she was a member of the Copyright Expert Panel of the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property Policy, which advised the UK Intellectual Property Office.  She is also currently President Elect of the European Copyright Society.  

Abstract: Genuine overlaps (several intellectual property rights (IPR) applying to the same intellectual effort) can create over-protection. There are some EU rules which prevent this but there is also some unharmonized areas.  There is hardly any empirical legal research done on how claimants have litigated at national level not only on their design rights but also on another IPR or unfair competition. This article fills this gap by examining the decisions on all types of design rights (registered and unregistered) from the courts of the 28 EU Member States since the entry into force of the Design Directive and Design Regulation until August 2017, where claimants also sued on the basis of another IPR namely patents, utility models, trade marks, copyright, and the tort of slavish imitation. The data shows that overall, genuine overlaps have not created over-protection as the courts have applied the EU rules correctly and harmoniously. However, there are some areas of concern worthy of further investigation.

Zoom Registration Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_816A3t8uTcStc-21seWmdQ