Legal protection of design in Russia can be obtained by a Eurasian design patent. Eurasian patents on industrial designs will be valid in the territory of those states in which the Protocol to the Eurasian Patent Convention on the Protection of Industrial Designs has already entered into force as of the date of filing of the relevant Eurasian applications for industrial designs. Currently, these states are the Republic of Armenia, the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Republic of Belarus, the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, the Russian Federation and the Republic of Tajikistan. Subsequently, after the relevant ratification of the Protocol, legal protection will be possible in Turkmenistan.
Legal protection is granted for 5 years with possible repeated extensions of 5 years for up to 25 years. The applicant may claim priority on the basis of one or more previous applications for industrial designs filed in or for any State party to the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property or the World Trade Organization.
The procedure for obtaining a Eurasian design patent differs from the procedure for obtaining a patent under the Russian procedure. The main features of the Eurasian procedure which can be useful for the applicant are the following:
- possibility to combine up to 100 industrial designs in one application within one class of the Locarno Classification;
- absence of the obligatory stage of examination for compliance with the patentability conditions «Novelty» and «Originality»;
- obtaining legal protection on the territory of several states at once.
At the same time, the high cost of official fees could be specified as a disadvantage of the Eurasian procedure.