On December 19, 2023, the Eurasian Patent Office jointly with the Russian State Academy of Intellectual Property held a seminar “Patenting Industrial Designs within the Eurasian Patent Organization”.

The examiners from the national patent offices of the Republic of Belarus, the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation highlighted the specifics of the national systems of industrial design patenting. In particular, the representatives of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Kazakhstan shared their experience in the national examination of industrial design applications. The representative of the Republic of Belarus described the specifics of the industrial design patent system based on post-registration opposition.

Dinara Serzhanova, examiner of the Industrial Designs Division of the EAPO Examination Department, made a presentation on the Eurasian patenting procedure.

The organisers of the seminar together with colleagues from the national patent offices of the States Parties to the Protocol to the Eurasian Patent Convention on the Protection of Industrial Designs (Protocol) in the second part of the seminar held a roundtable discussion on “Approaches to design patenting following the example of Eurasian applications”. It focused on certain practical issues concerning the drafting and examination of design applications in different countries using the examples of published Eurasian design applications.

Thus, the examiners had an opportunity to discuss the specifics of the implementation of “unity of class” and “unity of design” principles when grouping several industrial designs in one application, to consider the controversial aspects of claiming conventional priority, as well as the details of establishing the non-compliance of an industrial design with the criteria of patentability due to the apparent lack of creative nature of the product features and the presence of the product with similar features among products having a similar purpose.

Representatives of national patent offices of the States Parties to the Protocol, the Eurasian Economic Commission, Eurasian and national patent attorneys, designers, business representatives and other interested parties attended the seminar. In total, the seminar brought together more than 70 participants from 7 countries.