Design of a brick of a LEGO toy building set should be valid

#13Design of a brick of a LEGO toy building set should be valid

General Court of the European Union in judgement in case T-515/19 declared (Lego A/S v EUIPO and Delta Sport Handelskontor GmbH ), that the Board of Appeal of the European Union Intellectual Property Office ( further „EUIPO“ ) did not act in accordance with Regulation on Community Designs ( Council Regulation (EC) No 6/2002 of 12 December 2001 on Community designs ) and incorrectly decided on valid design of a LEGO brick .

LEGO company started proceedings before the General Court of the European Union and sought the annulment of the judgement from 2019. EUIPO issued a judgement in 2019, where they decided that the design of a brick is invalid, based on existence of 6 features, which were solely dictated by the technical function of the product. 

General Court of the European Union was of the opinion, that EUIPO did not act in accordance with Regulation on Community Designs. Court stated, that EUIPO did not find out all features of the appearance in the design and did not establish that they were solely based on the technical function of the product. In this case, it was not discussed whether there is the possibility of applying an exception on this design.

According to this judgement, if there is at least 1 feature, which is not solely based on the technical function of the product, then this design cannot be invalid. In this case, it is necessary to think about whether there is the exception.

The General Court pointed out the existence of one feature, which was not mentioned by EUIPO in its appeal. This led to the action that was not in accordance with Regulation.