News Item

RCD application content clarified

17 February 2010

OHIM, the official registry for Community Trade Mark and Registered Community Design applications, has now officially acknowledged that although only the first seven views (for each design) will be taken into account in a Registered Community Design (RCD) application, any surplus views submitted on filing will be archived in the application file and will be included in a certified copy of the RCD application, for priority purposes.

This may be helpful if you are interested in filing subsequent applications in other territories and you intend to claim the priority date of the RCD application, since many countries permit more than seven views per design.

As an example, in the US, a design application must contain a sufficient number of views (including at least one perspective view) to constitute a complete disclosure of the appearance of the design. Depending on the complexity of the design, this requirement may be hard to achieve using only seven views. It may therefore be advisable to include more than seven views in an initial RCD application so as to provide basis for claiming the priority date of each view in a subsequent US filing.

Furthermore, the Japanese system allows explanatory views (in addition to the six standard views of front, rear, top, bottom, left-side and right-side), where these views include elements not forming a part of the design, but which are included to aid understanding of the design. It may therefore also be worthwhile submitting more than seven views in an RCD application to provide basis for these explanatory views.

It is currently not known whether OHIM’s practice of allowing more than seven views to form part of an initially filed RCD application will have any other implications. These could include permitting the substitution of one or more of the first seven views with one or more of the supplementary views, or permitting the later filing of divisional applications towards the surplus views.

For more information, contact your usual Marks & Clerk attorney or Pamela Coles at pcoles@marks-clerk.com..