디자인보호법과 저작권법의 중첩적 보호에 대한 규범적 원리 고찰 — EU 디자인 제도의 누적적 보호 원리와 그 시사점 —

Overlapping protection between design law and copyright law arises when a single design simultaneously satisfies the protection requirements of both regimes. The European Union (EU) does not treat this overlap as a normative conflict but as an inherent structural feature of design protection. Accordingly, during the establishment of the Community Design system, the EU adopted the principle of cumulative protection as a regulatory mechanism for managing such overlaps. Subsequently, through the Flos, Cofemel, and Brompton judgments, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) clarified that design rights and copyright operate at distinct levels of protection—namely, “individual character” and “originality”—and may independently protect the same design. This EU approach offers meaningful implications for the Korean legal system, where the absence of a higher-level normative framework has led to recurring tension and doctrinal stagnation in addressing overlapping protection. A systematic distinction between the subject matter, scope, and level of protection pursued by the Design Protection Act and the realm of creative expression safeguarded by copyright law is therefore essential. Such a conceptual framework will provide an analytically robust basis for evaluating emerging design categories and for addressing design protection in the era of generative artificial intelligence.