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The Industrial Design Protection Act entered into force on 11 January 1998. On 1 April 2004 the Geneva Act of the Hague Agreement Concerning the International Deposit of Industrial Designs entered into force. Community design rights, including the Council Regulation 6/2002/EC on legal protection of Community designs of 12 December 2001. Besides the existing ordinary possibilities for registration all industrial designs disclosed to the public within the territory of the European Community a 3-year protection against imitation (copying) shall be granted automatically under the Geneva Act of the Hague Agreement.
In Estonia industrial designs are registered by publication or registration system. The Estonian Patent Office does not examine the industrial design as to its novelty, inventiveness and industrial applicability or the right of a person to file the application. The rights of the owner of the registered industrial design may be contested in court.
The term of protection of an industrial design is 5 years from the filing date of the registration application; after that the owner of the right may, by paying the state fee, renew the term of protection four times for periods of 5 years each, up to a maximum of 25 years.
The number of industrial designs entered in the State Register of Industrial Designs in Estonia on 31 December 2006 was 847. The number of international registrations of industrial designs granted legal protection in Estonia was 355 and in addition to them there are Community design registrations (see http://oami.europe.eu/en/office/stats.htm) and Community designs not registered.
Industrial design registration applications filed with the Estonian Patent Office in 2006 numbered 137, which 47% more than in 2005. Domestic industrial designs made up 66% of the applications (51% in 2005). 128 international industrial design registrations were received under the Hague Agreement, as a result of the distribution of the application their number increased to 192 by 31 December.
The volume of the examination of industrial designs in the Estonian Patent Office increased significantly in 2006. 367 decisions on registration were made in 2006. 37 notifications of refusals were sent to the WIPO, as there is a requirement in Estonia that an application may include only one industrial design, variants of an industrial design or a set of industrial designs. Refusal can be avoided by distributing an international registration into separate applications meeting this requirement in Estonia.
At the end of 2006 the number of pending domestic registration applications was 97 and pending international registration applications was 127. The average duration of the processing of an industrial design registration application is 1 to 2 months.
The most popular designed products at registration of industrial designs were watches in 2006 (105 international registrations of industrial designs by Swiss applicants). Protection was mainly sought for jewelry (81) and communication equipment (34).
Design2006.doc
II. Matters concerning the generation, reproduction, and distribution of industrial design documents and of secondary sources of industrial design information, i.e., official gazettes
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