A Community design shall enjoy protection to the extent that it is new and has individual character.

Novelty: a design shall be considered to be new if no identical design has been made available to the public: (1) before the date on which the design for which a protection is sought has first been made available to the public in case of an unregistered Community design; (2) before the date of filing (or priority date when it is claimed) in case of a registered Community design. In this case a disclosure will not be taken into consideration if made during the twelve-month period preceding the filing. We should point out the flexibility of this provision (Article 7, 2.b) which will no doubt give rise to some difficulties in practice.

Individual character: means that the overall impression left by the design to the informed user should differ from the overall impression produced on such a user by any design previously available to the public. This criterion will serve to define the scope of protection of the design. In this regard, the Regulation foresees that the degree of freedom of the designer in developing the design shall be taken into consideration.