Registered and unregistered Community designs are available under EU Regulation 6/2002,[1] which provide a unitary right covering the European Union.
Many Member States also protect unregistered design rights under their national law, but these are not covered by the Directive.
[3] The Regulation on Community designs provides for the recognition of the priority date of an application for design right registration in a country which is either a member of the World Trade Organization or a party to the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property.
On 1 January 2008, the European Union became a party to the Geneva Act of the Hague Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Industrial Designs [4].
As required by that Directive, the European Commission has conducted research on the question, which found that spare parts such as wings and bumpers were 6.4–10.3% more expensive in countries where these parts were protected by industrial design rights compared with countries where no such protection existed: it has proposed that the design right protection on these parts be abolished throughout the European Union.