The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has sided with designer label Karen Millen in a dispute with Dunnes Stores over fashion designs. The British designer is taking legal action against Dunnes over alleged infringement of its fashion designs.
This morning the ECJ has said a design does not necessarily need to be officially registered in order to enjoy legal protection.
"The Regulation on Community designs provides that a design (whether registered or not) is to be protected at EU level to the extent that it is new (not made available to the public previously) and has individual character (the overall impression it produces on the informed user differs from that produced by any design which has been made available to the public previously)" the Court says.
In 2005, Karen Millen placed a striped shirt (in a blue and a stone brown version) and a black knit top on sale in Ireland. Examples of those were purchased by representatives of Dunnes from one of Karen Millen Irish outlets, the ECJ explains.
It says Dunnes subsequently had copies of the garments made outside Ireland and put them on sale in its Irish stores in late 2006.
And in January 2007, Karen Millen started proceedings in the Irish courts, looking to have Dunnes restrained from using its unregistered designs, and damages for the unauthorised use of them.
Dunnes states that as Karen Millen failed to prove the individual character of the designs, it is not the holder of an unregistered design. Dunnes also believes that a new design cannot have individual character, since it is merely an amalgam of specific features or parts of earlier designs.
But today the ECJ ruled regulations gave "a presumption of validity of unregistered Community designs so that, in such actions, the right holder of an unregistered Community design is not required to prove that it has individual character".
The Court says the right holder only has to "indicate what constitutes the individual character of that design, that is to say, indicates what, in his view, are the element or elements of the design concerned which give it its individual character".
The case now goes back to the Irish Supreme Court for a final ruling.
