The design is relevant for a wide range of industrial, fashion and craft products: from technical or medical tools to watches, jewellery and other luxury goods; from household accessories, toys, furniture and electrical accessories, to cars and architectural structures; from fabrics motifs to sport equipment and, while the culture related to the patent has dedicated countless publications to the evaluation of the patent, in relation to the design nothing of all this happened; it would almost seem that the designs were relegated to intangible assets of second rate..
However, statistical numbers testify to the opposite. The Office of the European Union for Intellectual Property – EUIPO – highlights that: “Design is the main driving force behind innovation and economic growth. Design-intensive industries generate 12% of all jobs in the EU and almost 13% of its GDP “; and again: “Every year we register almost 100,000 designs, offering intellectual property protection to companies and individuals in a market of over 500 million consumers.”
Italy with 29,400 drawings registered in the last three years (2016-2018) is the second EU state, while outside the EU, in a world ranking, Italy precedes the USA with 26,896 registrations and the People’s Republic of China with 20,441.
As far as industrial design is concerned, the sectors in which Italy has registered a greater number of international applications and which have led it to rank among the top ten countries in the world ranking are: the construction sector where Italy is in 3rd place, the furniture sector and household items where Italy appears to be in 2nd place and the textile and accessories that sees Italy classified in 1st place. (For further information: WIPO IP facts & figures 2017).
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