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Industrial Designs
Industrial design protection is available for the shape, configuration or ornamentation applied to an article of manufacture and is protectible in Canada by an industrial design registration. In the United States, such designs are protectible by design patents. Most countries offer some form of protection for such designs. For more information about protection in Canada and elsewhere, choose from the menu at the left.
Summary: Designs Registrable in Canada
Features of shape, configuration, pattern or ornament and any combination of those features that, in a finished article, appeal to and are judged solely by the eye are registrable. An article is considered to be any thing that is made by hand, tool or machine. An application for registration must be filed within one year of first publication, public use, or sale, anywhere in the world, of the design or of articles displaying, bearing or embodying the design.
An individual artistic creation, such as a statue or sculpture, not intended to be reproduced more than fifty times by an industrial process, is protectable under the Copyright Act and should not be made the subject of an industrial design registration.
Elements of shape or configuration dictated by the utilitarian or functional features of an article of manufacture, processes of manufacture, principles of construction or materials of construction are not registrable under the Industrial Design Act but may, if novel, useful and unobvious, be protected under the Patent Act. Ideas cannot be protected by industrial design registration.
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