Unit 3: Law of Industrial Design
3.1 Concept and Elements of Industrial Design
The industrial design = the product’s appearance protected — the ornamentation’s right (the shape, pattern, colour-and-line composition that appeals to the eye — the “eye-appeal” test of the classic lore): the article’s two-or-three-dimensional look, applied by an industrial process. The design protects how it looks, not how it works (the patent’s territory) and not what it says (the mark’s). The elements’ three: (1) novelty/originality — the new-and-independently-created look (the absolute-vs-relative novelty standards’ spectrum); (2) industrial applicability — the repeated-production capability (the craft-prototype vs the industry’s line); (3) visibility and appeal — the article’s external look (the hidden internal parts and the purely functional features fail the test).
3.2 Justifications on Protection of Industrial Design
- The design investment’s reward — the styling’s creation cost against the knock-off’s free ride (the furniture, garments, footwear and consumer-goods worlds — the copy’s speed problem).
- The competition’s quality-and-culture — the design race enriching the market’s aesthetics and the consumers’ choice.
- The consumer’s signal — the design as the origin-and-quality’s face (the mark’s cousin at the shelf).
- The SME-and-craft development — Nepal’s own stakes: the handicrafts, woodwork, pashmina, metal craft and garment sectors’ design heritage, and their copying vulnerability — the design right as the craft economy’s shield.
3.3 Subsistence, Ownership and Term of Industrial Design
Subsistence: the registration’s dependency (the deposit-and-examination route — a lighter regime than the patent’s: the formality-and-novelty checks, the publication-and-opposition faces); the Paris priority’s application (the six-month window’s claim for the convention applicants). The unregistered-and-copyright overlap: the applied-art bridge — where the two-dimensional artistic work (copyright) meets the three-dimensional article (design), the dual-protection debates live (the Nepali Copyright Act’s applied-art faces and the U5 cross-reference); the industrial-design’s requirement that the design be applied to an article by industrial process keeps the pure artwork out. Ownership:
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