Design Law

Canella Camaiora® assists designers, companies, and creative professionals in protecting design where aesthetics play an essential role in product value. This includes furniture, fashion and accessories, household and kitchen items, jewelry and watches, as well as graphic design, retail design, and increasingly, digital design—such as UI/UX interfaces, websites, and mobile applications. In each of these areas, design serves as a decisive competitive asset.

To ensure effective legal protection, the firm offers a comprehensive suite of services tailored to the needs of each project. Legal proficiency must go hand-in-hand with aesthetic awareness.

Design protection is governed by Italian, European, and international law, depending on the territorial scope in which the aesthetic features of a product are to be protected. Under Italian law, a design must meet two essential requirements to be registered: novelty—meaning it must not be identical to any existing, publicly disclosed design—and individual character—it must produce a different overall impression on the informed user compared to prior designs.

Designs may be registered with the Italian Patent and Trademark Office (UIBM) for national protection, the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) for EU-wide protection, or through the Hague System managed by WIPO, which enables multi-jurisdictional protection through a single application. In all cases, protection is initially granted for five years and can be renewed in five-year increments for up to 25 years.

The European Union also offers unregistered design protection, which grants automatic protection for three years from the date of the design’s first public disclosure within the EU.

Design protection may be combined with copyright, trademark, and unfair competition law, resulting in a layered and reinforced legal shield. Canella Camaiora® provides end-to-end assistance across all these areas—from registrability assessment to managing international filings—with a technically sound and strategically oriented approach, aimed at leveraging design as a key competitive and brand-building asset.