The German Design Act has been amended with effect of 1 January 2014. The main change in the law relates to the cancellation proceedings. Under the old Design Act, registered German designs could only be nullified via expensive cancellation proceedings before civil courts where representation by lawyers was required (with total costs of about € 5,000 minimum). Now, however, the amended Act allows much cheaper nullity proceedings that can be initiated by everyone without representation before the German Patent and Trade Mark Office (with total costs of € 300 in the best case). In addition, designs can still be put in issue by way of a counterclaim for a declaration of invalidity.

The new law reflects essentially the design cancellation principles of Community Design Regulation 6/2002. The change in the law is expected to raise the number of cancellation proceedings started, in particular by small and medium-sized companies. Another interesting aspect of the new Design Act is that it is now possible to combine several designs in one multiple application even if the products in which the designs are intended to be incorporated do not all belong to the same class of the Locarno Classification for Industrial Designs. This is different from Article 37 of the Community Design Regulation. It makes design applications in Germany cheaper and may help to increase the number of German registered designs. 

This item has been prepared for the Class 99 weblog by Friederike Manz (Olswang LLP, Munich).