Individual character, design freedom and saturation

Crowded field -- but still room for everyone?

"The individual character of a design: freedom and the ‘saturation of the state of the art’" is the title of a Current Intelligence note by Italian attorney Stefano Barazza (Studio Legale Barazza, Udine) and which will soon be published in the Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice (JIPLP). The piece can be read in its entirety on the jiplp weblog here. The subject of this note is the recent brace of decisions of the General Court of the European Union in Joined Cases T-83/11 and T-84/11, Antrax IT Srl v OHIM, 13 November 2012. According to the abstract:

The General Court, reviewing a decision of the OHIM's Board of Appeal on the lack of individual character of a design concerning a thermosyphon for radiators, provides a thorough assessment of the notions of ‘informed user’ and ‘degree of freedom of the designer’, observing that the ‘saturation of the state of the art’ (crowded field) may be relevant to assess the degree of awareness of the informed user.