#62025TJ0578EU court upholds invalidity of registered door design over earlier brochure disclosure
AI-generated summary for informational purposes only. Not legal advice. See the original source for the authoritative text.
This ruling keeps an EU door design invalid because the court accepted an earlier promotional brochure as proof that the same design had already been made public before the filing date. For businesses, the message is simple: old marketing materials can defeat later design rights if they show the product clearly and can be tied to a date before registration. The court also rejected claims that the brochure was likely fabricated, saying speculation is not enough without concrete signs of tampering. Companies challenging or defending design rights should keep dated sales and marketing records, and anyone relying on an older design should be ready to prove when and how it was disclosed.
AI-generated summary. May contain errors. Refer to official sources for legal decisions.
Key Changes
- The court accepted a promotional brochure as enough proof that the earlier door design had been disclosed before the filing date.
- It confirmed that concrete evidence, not just speculation, is needed to argue that an item of evidence was fabricated or manipulated.
- It upheld the invalidation of the registered EU design for lack of individual character.
Obligations
What this law requires
In invalidity proceedings, the party seeking to invalidate an EU design must provide solid and objective evidence that an earlier design was actually disclosed to the public before the filing date of the contested design; probabilities or suppositions are not enough.
Where a brochure or similar marketing material is relied on to prove prior disclosure, it must clearly show the earlier design and contain reliable temporal information tying the disclosure to a date before the contested design’s filing date.
A party disputing prior disclosure must rebut it with concrete facts suggesting manipulation or falsification; abstract allegations that evidence could have been fabricated are insufficient.
To oppose a prior-disclosure claim, the design holder must prove to the requisite legal standard that the alleged disclosure could not reasonably have become known in the normal course of business to the specialist circles in the EU sector concerned.
Parties may not introduce new evidence for the first time before the General Court to change the subject matter of the proceedings; review is confined to the legality of the Board of Appeal decision on the record before it.