On 1st May 2025, Phase 1 of the EUIPO’s design reform came into effect. This is made up of The Amending Regulation (Regulation – EU – 2024/2822) and The Recast Directive (Directive – EU – 2024/2823). This will be followed by Phase 2, which will bring further amendments, and will apply from 1 July 2026.
Many of the changes brought about by this reform are motivated by a desire to align EU design law with the world around us, which is increasingly manifesting in digital forms. One of those changes is the formalisation of protection for animated designs.
So what has changed?
In the old regulation, a design was defined as:
“the appearance of the whole or a part of a product resulting from the features of, in particular, the lines, contours, colours, shape, texture and/or materials of the product itself and/or its ornamentation”
In the new regulation, this definition has changed to:
“the appearance of the whole or a part of a product resulting from the features, in particular the lines, contours, colours, shape, texture and/or materials, of the product itself and/or of its decoration, including the movement, transition or any other sort of animation of those features”
Further, the list illustrating what constitutes a product has been re-arranged and broadened. The new definition expressly encompasses graphic works, logos, surface patterns, and graphical user interfaces.
Although animation was not explicitly catered for by the previous regulation, the EUIPO has previously allowed designs for animations. One such example is RCD No 2085894-0014 which was registered in 2012 and shows a rainbow progressing around an almost complete circle.
In practice, a restriction on such designs was the requirement that designs be represented by a maximum of seven static views (as can be seen in the above example). The guidelines stated that snapshots should show a single animated design at different specific moments in time, in a clearly understandable progression, and that it was the applicant’s responsibility to order the views in such a way as to give a clear perception of the movement/progression. Whilst this is possible for simple animations, such as the above design, this could be extremely challenging, and at times impossible for more complex animations.
In view of this, phase 2 of the reform is expected to remove the seven-view limit, and it will likely become possible to represent a design in other digital forms. We expect that both JPEG and MP4 formats will be allowed, but this is yet to be confirmed.
What does this all mean?
Validity and infringement of registered designs is dependent on a design producing a different overall impression on the informed user to that which is produced by another, and deciding whether or not the overall impression differs is often the battlefield of registered design validity and infringement proceedings. This is an inherently subjective question, and conclusions are informed by a significant body of case law which has built up over time.
Animated designs which can be represented by seven static views, such as the one above, must necessarily be fairly simple, and so the assessment of the overall impression is not too dissimilar to that for non-animated designs. However, the possibility for video files will allow much more complex animations, movements and transitions to be represented and protected. With this complexity will come new considerations when assessing the overall impression, and early case law will be crucial in determining how animated designs are interpreted going forwards.
At Dehns, we will be keeping a close eye on how the case law in this new area will develop, and intend to put ourselves at the forefront of these exciting new opportunities for EU registered design protection.