유럽연합(EU) 디자인 보호제도 연구

The European Union (EU) design protection system has the characteristic of adopting the so-called design approach, which affirms overlapping protection under design law and copyright law, and that design should grasp the unique existence of design law through a marketing tool approach. Since 2002, the European Community Design Regulations have operated two systems: the European Union Design (now the EU Registered Design Right) system and the Unregistered Community Design (now the EU Registered Design Right). Meanwhile, about 20 years later, the European Union recently revised its design law in October 2024 in line with the digital era. This 2024 revised design law consists of the new EU Design Regulation (EUDR) 2024/2822 (regulations directly applied to EUIPO) and EU Design Directive (EUDD) 2024/2823 (which must be implemented by Member States by December 9, 2027) and has been in effect step by step since May 1, 2025(with some provisions phased in through 2026 and beyond). The European Community Design Guidelines (Directive) and the European Community Design Regulation (Regulation) before the revision specify individual character along with novelty as a requirement for design protection (Article 3.2 and Article 4.1 of the Guidelines). The revised 2024 EU Design Act is also inherited as it is. In particular, the European Union Design Act has novelty requirements (Articles 4 and 5) and uniqueness requirements (Articles 4 and 6) from the beginning as protection requirements. Here, the uniqueness requirement regulations are not about the degree of creation, but about whether it is distinguished from prior design, and the purpose is to focus on the economic value of design rather than whether or not to create design. As a separate protection requirement not required by Korea's design protection law, the design system of the European Union (EU) and Korea is very different in that they will be protected as EU designs only with individual characters. Such an individual character requirement asks whether a design can be identified as a known design from the perspective of an informed user with normal information, and the degree of design creation is not a problem. According to legislative participant Annette Kur, the idea of a design approach derived from market function as a basis for understanding the essential characteristics of the European design system, explaining the “individual character” requirement as a design protection requirement. The “individual character” requirement of the European Design System (Article 6, Paragraph 1 of the European Community Design Regulations) points out that there are differences in essential meaning and that they give essential meaning to the change in the nature of the design system. In short, in 2025, some academic circles have been discussing the possibility of introducing the European Union design system into the Korean Design Act. However, as a preliminary task for the introduction discussion, it is necessary to examine the concept of individual character requirements and the specific meaning and content of the unique character requirements in detail compared to the Korean design legislation.