유럽연합의 미등록 부분디자인 보호와 우리 디자인 보호체계에의 시사점

The Court of Justice of the European Union recently published its preliminary ruling in case Ferrari v. Mansory Design. In essence, CJEU confirmed protection of unregistered design for parts of products and its requirements. Firstly, unregistered design right arises from the time that makes available to the public. When the design of entire product is disclosed, that of part can also be protected if it is clearly identifiable. Secondly, where the making available consists in the publication of images of a product, the features of the part or component of that product for which protection is sought must be clearly visible when assessing the requirement of indivisual character. This paper analyzed the implications from the CJEU case for design protection system in Korea. In Korea, prevention of imitation of Unfair Competition Prevention Act rules unregistered design protection. Under the current legal system, it is necessary to recognize the protection of unregistered design for parts of products under the Unfair Competition Prevention Act because of similarity with the purpose of introducing the partial design system under the Design Protection Act. This paper proposes that it is necessary to satisfy the requirement of clearly identifiable and visible when seeking protection of unregistered design for parts of products as the CJEU case. Then it leads to unregistered design for parts be possible to compare with and exclude the protection when identical to earlier design.