The WIPO’s new Riyadh Design Law Treaty aims to make the international protection of designs easier, faster and cheaper, by providing a framework of harmonised cross-border features and rules on application requirements and registration procedures; the new treaty will enter into force when a minimum of 15 contracting states is reached.

The Riyadh Design Law Treaty is a new international agreement aiming to make it easier, faster and cheaper to protect designs internationally; it was hatched on 22 November 2024 at the end of a diplomatic conference of member states of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) taking place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Currently, some countries grant registered design rights, others provide only for patent design rights, requiring a thorough examination of a design application. For both these kinds of design protection, procedures vary from state to state.

According to the WIPO’s press release, the new treaty should help to make national procedures less complex and more affordable, for the benefit of all design-based businesses and in particular of small entities, such as individual designers as well as micro, small and medium-sized enterprises.

The treaty’s future effects

The brand-new Riyadh Design Law Treaty must reach a minimum of 15 contracting states before it can come into force; when it does, its main effects will include the following:

• setting a maximum list of indications or elements that designers must submit with an application
• allowing applicants to choose how they represent the design in an application (drawings, photographs or, if admitted by the IP office, video)
• allowing applicants to include several designs in a single application, under certain conditions
• setting out requirements for the granting of a filing date
• providing for a grace period of 12 months following a first disclosure of the design, during which such disclosure will not affect its validity for registration
• allowing applicants to keep their designs unpublished for at least six months after having secured a filing date
• providing relief measures and offer some flexibility to applicants to prevent them from losing their rights if they miss a deadline
• simplifying the procedure for requesting the renewal of a design registration
• furthering the introduction of e-filing systems for designs and the electronic exchange of priority documents.

Moreover, the Riyadh Design Law Treaty provides a safeguard for traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions through a provision under which contracting parties may require applicants to file information on traditional cultural expressions and traditional knowledge relevant to the eligibility for registration of the design.

It remains to be seen how many contracting states the newly adopted treaty will be able to attract, and how quickly.

Further information

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