1. WHAT CAN BE REGISTERED AS A DESIGN
Under Art. 6 of the Design Law No 129/92, as republished in 2014, „the subject of the application may be registered to the extent in which it constitutes a design, within the meaning of Art. 2, it is new and has individual character.”
Under Art. 2, d) of the above-mentioned Law, a design is the appearance of a product or of a part thereof, in two or three dimensions, resulting from the combination of the main features, particularly lines, outlines, colours, shape, texture and/or materials of the product itself and/or its ornamentation;
2. WHAT CANNOT BE REGISTERED AS A DESIGN
Designs determined exclusively by a technical function cannot be registered, under Art. 8(1) of the Design Law No 129/92, as republished in 2014. Designs contrary to public order and morality shall be excluded from protection, as well, under Art. 9 of the same Law. The application shall be refused if it incorporates a work protected under the Copyright and Related Rights Law No. 8/1996, with the subsequent amendments and completions or any other protected industrial property right, without the owner’s consent. The application shall be refused, as well, if it constitutes an improper use of any of the objects mentioned in the list under Art. 6 ter of the Paris Convention, or an abusive use of the emblems and escutcheons, others than those mentioned under the Article 6 ter of the Convention accessed by Romania in 1968.
3. ANTERIORITY DOCUMENTARY SEARCH
Prior to filing the registration application, an anteriority documentary search can be conducted in the documents existing at the Design Division, to find out what is registered in the respective field and to see what chances you have to obtain the certificate. For this approach, you are supposed to file a standard application form addressed to OSIM - Design Division, and to pay the corresponding fee. The search forms and the amount of the related fees can be obtained from the Public Relations Bureau, from a Regional Center, an industrial property attorney or from the OSIM web site. In the same sense, you can follow the monthly publications in the Official Industrial Property Bulletin (BOPI) - Designs Section. These bulletins can be accessed on the OSIM website, can be read at the Reading Hall of OSIM or can be purchased for a fee.
4. CONSTITUTING THE REGULAR FILING
For constituting the regular filing, in accordance with the Design Law No 129/92, as republished in 2014, you will be required to file the follwing documents with OSIM, Document Receiving Bureau, Room 2, ground floor:
1) the standard form - Cerere de înregistrare a desenului/modelului – D 01(Application for Design Registration) accompanied by the graphic representations of the designs the protection of which is sought;
2) the proof of payment of the filing fee.
For filling in the standard form, you have two possibilities:
A) online, by accessing Design application. In this case, before starting to fill in the form, you are supposed to pay the filing and publication fee, as in order to close the application and receive the filing number (application number) it is necessary to specify the number of the payment order with which you paid said fees, scan it and add it to the file. Fees can be paid to the OSIM account (lei): RO05 TREZ 7032 0F33 5000 XXXX, Trezoreria Sector 3, Bucharest fiscal code: 4266081. Graphic representations of the design(s) must be in gif format.
B) by accessing the form in pdf format, either from the Forms - Designs section, or from "Designs” section on the OSIM website; it must be filled in by printing or typing (not hand written), in Romanian, according to the guide on its last page, in 3 copies, so that one copy remains to the applicant, with the serial number assigned by the Registration Office. This form can be filed with OSIM directly at its headquarters, it can be sent by mail with acknowledgment of receipt or it can be filed by e-mail at
In the form we need to fiind the following:
- a request for registration of the design;
- identification data of the applicant;
- the number of designs for which protection is sought;
- indication of the products in which the design is incorporated, if appropriate;
- description of the new elements, characteristic of the design for which the protection is requested, as they appear in the filed graphic representations;
- the names of the authors or a statement on the applicant’s responsibility that the authors have waived their right of being mentioned in the application and/or in the design publications;
- the signature of the applicant and, where applicable, the stamp of the company.
The graphic representations of the design, in 3 copies, and the proof of payment of the filing and publication fees (copy of the fiscal invoice obtained from the OSIM cashier or copy of the payment order) in accordance with point 1 of the Annex no. 5 of G.O. No. 41/1998 on the fees in the industrial property protection field, as republished in 2006, with the amounts updated on 01.01.2024.
The application for registration may also contain, if appropriate, other elements that do not condition the date of the regular filing:
- identification data of the professional representative, if designated in the application for registration;
- power of attorney for representation before OSIM;
- priority documents, in case a registration or exhibition priority is claimed;
- request for deferment of publication, accompanied by the fee for this procedure;
- the statement indicating the information which, according to the applicant’s knowledge, allows to prove the fulfilment of the conditions to grant the protection for the design whose registration is claimed.
5. GRAPHIC REPRESENTATIONS OF THE DESIGN
Under Art. 20 of the Design Law No. 129/1992, as republished in 2014, the design application together with the attached graphic representations, shall be published in the Official Industrial Property Bulletin - Designs Section, in electronic format.
In order to establish the optimal dimensions of the graphic representations, we recommend you to take into account the fees related to the publication procedure, fees mentioned in point 2 of Annex 5 of G. O. 41/1998, as republished in 2006 with the subsequent completions and amendments and with the updated amountsstarting with 01.01.2024, regarding both the choice of the black and white or color variant and the surface occupied by each of the graphic representations of the design to be protected. The unit area – which is the minimum as far as the publication procedure fees are concerned - is a square with a side of 6 x 6 cm, and the maximum area allowed for publication cannot exceed 18 x 24 cm.
If protection is requested for several designs, they will be numbered so that they can be distinguished, as graphic representations, and will be corroborated with the numbers of the descriptions written in box 9 on page 2 of the application form. Thus, the stand-alone representations of designs will be numbered in the order of the natural sequence of numbers, starting with 1, 2, 3,… and the the other representations of the same design with 1.1, 1.2, 1.3… if, for example, the design must be represented in 3 distinct views to understand its external appearance.
A copy of the representations will be placed on separate sheets to be considered as the original and will be signed, in the lower right corner, by the applicant, if a natural person, and in the case of a legal entity, next to the signature, the stamp of the company is supposed to be applied. The other two copies of the representations will be placed on other separate sheets, in the natural order of the natural sequence of numbers.
An application may contain the the request for the protection of several designs, thereby constituting a multiple deposit (Art. 14 of the same law), if they are intended to be incorporated in the same category of products, if they satisfy a rule of unity of design, or unit of use. A multiple deposit may comprise up to 100 designs, in accordance with Art. 15 (1) of the Implementing Regulation to the aforementioned law.
6. REPRESENTATION BEFORE OSIM
If you consider that you need specialized support for the preparation of documentation, we recommend you to seek the assistance of an industrial property attorney authorized by OSIM. The list of these persons and of the specialized agencies with all the contact data, can be found on the OSIM website and on the website of the National Chamber of Industrial Property Attorneys in Romania - CNCPIR: www.patent-chamber.ro.
7. FEES
The fees charged by OSIM for the protection of designs, according to G. O. 41/1998, on the fees in the industrial property protection field of and the conditions for using the same, as republished in 2006, with the subsequent amendments, with the updated amounts starting with 01.01.2024 are the following:
The fee for filing the application for registration:
- for the first design: 149 lei;
- for each additional design: 50 lei.
The fee for the publication of the design (paid within 5 days from constituting the regular filing):
- for each figure in standard space of 6/6 cm black and white: 99 lei;
- for each figure in standard space of 6/6 cm color: 497 lei;
- for the characteristic elements (every 30 words): 50 lei.
The fee for examination of the application for registration (paid within one month of the publication of the design):
- for the first design: 249 lei;
- for each additional design: 50 lei;
Fee for issuance of the registration certificate (paid within one month from the communication of the decision to admit registration):
- for 1 - 20 designs: 99 lei;
- for 21 - 50 designs: 149 lei;
- for 51 - 100 designs: 249 lei.
The fee for the maintenance in force of the registration certificate, for each protection period of 5 years (paid in maximum one month from the communication of the admission decision for the first protection period of 5 years and until the beginning of the next 5 year period ):
- for 1 - 20 designs: 497 lei;
- for 21 - 50 designs: 622 lei;
- for 51 - 100 designs: 746 lei.
Natural persons are eligible for a 50% exemption from the amount of fees - under the conditions of Art. 2 of G.O. mentioned above, if their income, average gross monthly income for the last 12 months, is less than 5 times the average gross monthly income per economy, as officially published in the last 12 months. To prove this eligibility limit, you will be required to file a certificate from the workplace, the financial administration, the rectory, the military unit, or a pension receipt, as the case may be, accompanied by a statement under your own responsibility, on a standard form.
The Romanian natural or legal persons will pay the the fees due to OSIM in lei, according to Art. 7 of G. O. mentioned above, while the foreign persons will pay them in in euro.
8. PROTECTION
The filing of the application for registration of the design (constituting the regular filing) with OSIM shall provide the applicant with a right of priority (Art. 15 of Design Law no. 129/1992, as republished in 2014), starting on the date of constituting the deposit, in relation to any subsequent deposit concerning the same design. Starting with the date of publication of the design in the Official Industrial Property Bulletin, Designs Section, the applicant shall benefit by a temporary protection, according to Art. 34, until the registration certificate is issued. During the entire validity period, the registration certificate confers to the owner an exclusive right to exploit the design and the right to prohibit third parties from using it, in accordance with Art. 30).
9. APPEAL AGAINST THE DECISIONS OF THE EXAMINATION BOARD
The decisions of the Examination Board regarding the applications for registration of designs may be appealed against, in writing and reasoned, with OSIM, within 30 days from the date of their communication in BOPI, according to Art. 24 of the Design Law no. 129/1992, as republished in 2014. The appeal fee is 730 lei, according to point 11 of Annex 5 of G. O. 41/1998 mentioned above.
10. DESIGN PROTECTION ABROAD
The Paris Convention stipulates a priority period of 6 months from the date of the regular filing of the design. As a result, you may benefit by this time limit to form either an international filing with the WIPO International Bureau under the Hague Agreement (1960) or, directly, through national applications with the offices of the States in which you wish to extend the protection of the design, using the priority date of the deposit in Romania.
11. RECOMMENDATIONS
For a better understanding of the definitions of the two categories – two-dimensional and three-dimensional designs, the conditions required to be met in order for them to be admitted to registration and the characteristics that define them, you can consult:
- Design Law no. 129/1992, as republished in 2014;
- Implementing Regulations to the Design Law 129/1992 approved by the G.D. No. 211/2008;
- Government Ordinance No 41/1998 on the fees in the industrial property protection field of and the conditions for using the same, as republished in 2006, with the subsequent amendments and completions, with the amounts updated on 01.01.2024.
On the OSIM website www.osim.ro, on the “Designs” page, you can find all the legislation in this field, including international treaties and conventions to which Romania is a party.