Analogous reasons which were the basis of the new arrangement of the patent law, formed, in the Act No. 527/90 Coll., the needed legislative frame for the arrangement of Industrial designs. The sense of the industrial legal protection is to protect, above all, the original aesthetic solution of the external appearance of products, as the result of a creative activity of the industrial designing and forming of products.

An external arrangement of a product, i.e. its planary arrangement or space one, residing particularly in the form, shape, outline, drawing, arrangement of colours or in combination of said features, that is the industrial design, of course, provided that it fulfils further preconditions:

• Novelty: the novelty is the basic precondition of the protection, it means that the industrial design must not be known from publicly accessible sources before the priority date, especially shown or described in publicly accessible printed matter, publicly utilized, exposed, made public in a lecture, or presented. The novelty is the basic legal material precondition which has to be found out exclusively by the Office.
• Industrial utilizability: this precondition is fulfilled by those solutions which may be reproduced any time, i.e. their production or utilization must be repeatable. The valid legal arrangement does not exclude for works of used art to be the industrial design.
• The following solutions are not the industrial design:
  - technical and constructional solutions,
  - transfers of a known external arrangement of a product onto a product of another sort, or an arrangement formed by enlarging or diminishing a known external arrangement of a product,
  - a change of material for an external arrangement of the product,
  - an architectonic solution of a building (it may be protected by means of the Authoris Law)
  - an external arrangement of a product which may be found out only at a special attention,
  - colour, if it is used without a combination with a shape, outline or drawing.

The procedure on an entry of an industrial design is started by filing the application of the industrial design at the Industrial Ownership Office. The originator, or his legal representative, is entitled to file the application.

The application may include only one external arrangement of the product -simple application - or more external arrangements of products of the same sort, mutually analogous or designed to a common use. In such a case it is a collective application. The number of individual embodiments of the external arrangement of products for a collective application of products of one sort is limited by twenty embodiments. If the subject of a collective application resides in a solution of an external arrangement of products designed to a common use, the number of said external arrangements is not limited.

In the same way as at other industrial rights to results of creative activities, the filing day of the application is also the priority day. There also exists the exhibition priority which may be admitted by the Office to products exhibited in exhibitions organized in the Czech Republic, viz. from the date, when these products were delivered to the exhibition. The precondition, in this case, resides in the fact that an industrial design application for the exhibited product may be filed not later than three months after the termination of the exhibition.

The filed application of an industrial design shall be subject to a search of the Office, and, if the subject of the application complies with conditions laid down by the law for its entry, the Office shall register it in the Register of Industrial Designs, and the applicant shall become owner of the industrial design.

The entry of the industrial design is valid for 5 year from the filing date of the application, and the validity of said entry may be prolonged twice, always for 5 years, viz. at the request of the owner filed in the last year of validity.

The right resulting from the registration of the industrial design is the exclusive right. The owner has the right to utilize the industrial design, to provide his approval to utilize it to other persons, or to transfer the industrial design to them. The owner may exercise his rights not only in a positive way, but in a negative way too, i.e. he/it may forbid all third persons to utilize the industrial design. By the utilization there is understood an import or any putting into circulation of the product pursuant to the industrial design.

Sources of law

• 527/1990 - Coll., Act on inventions, industrial designs and rationalization improvements
• 550/l990 - Coll., Decree on proceedings concerning inventions and industrial designs