Here's news of a couple of recent publications involving design rights in Europe. First -- in French, is "Karen Millen: un arrêt fashion favorable aux titulaires de droits", published in Propriété industrielle n° 5, mai 2015, comm. 38. It's written by blogger Laure Marino, who writes about the Karen Millen case in the Court of Justice of the European Union on her own blog here.

The second is by Valentina Torelli, "The informed user's perception and a design's individual character", in the Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice JIPLP (first published online August 20, 2015). This is a Current Intelligence case note on a General Court ruling in Senz Technologies BV v OHIM, Impliva B (Parapluies), Joined Cases T-22/13 and T-23/13, EU: EU:T:2015:310. Accorrding to the abstract:

In a scenario in which the freedom of the designer is limited and the informed user shows a higher level of attention when wishing to buy an umbrella, the General Court held that Senz's highly wind-resistant umbrellas had individual character and deserved to be registered notwithstanding a challenge from invalidity applicant Implivia. That was so even though it had been recognized that some prior art existed in the form of an US earlier patent, but that earlier design of an umbrella produced a different overall impression on the informed user.