Industrial Design Rights is a revised and updated third edition of a significant work first published in 2001 under the auspices of the Intellectual Property Committee of the International Bar Association. There have been considerable changes since the previous edition principally in the increasing adoption of the Hague Convention on designs all over the world and harmonization of industrial designs among the European Community countries. Industrial designs are particularly interesting because the laws in many countries attempt in different ways to find a balance between protection for the artistic creation and the freedom to use the purely functional, and between the proprietary rights of the creator and the public domain rights of the competitor.

The third edition comprises twenty-five country chapters written by one or more prominent intellectual property lawyer(s) in the country covered. Design patents are not treated the same way in all jurisdictions and hence to facilitate cross-jurisdictional comparison, each chapter is structured according to the following sequence of topics covering all new developments in each jurisdiction:

- conventions and legislation;

- definition of what constitutes a protectable design;

- originality/novelty;

- duration of protection;

- infringement;

- defences to infringement;

- procedures for filing application for registration; and

- expunging, cancelling, or varying registration.

Prominent new developments covered in the third edition include new chapters from South Korea, Russia and Turkey as well as continuing coverage of the impact of the European Community Design Directive, the adoption of the Hague Agreement with corresponding major changes to the US and Canadian design law and practice, the newly revised Japanese Design Law, and China’s revised Guidelines for Examination.

With each chapter organized around a series of identical headings or topics for each jurisdiction enabling an easy comparison of the scope and subject matter of protection, this book is one of its kind, and it will be of immeasurable value to lawyers and others involved in industrial design. No other resource explores the practice, theory, scope, and types of design protection as this book.