The Hague Agreement is an international registration system which offers the possibility of obtaining protection for industrial designs in a number of States and/or intergovernmental organizations by means of a single international application filed with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
Introduction
The Hague Agreement is consist of four international treaties:
The original version of the Agreement and the London Act are frozen. The 1999 and the 1960 Acts of the Hague Agreement are autonomous and totally independent of each other. Therefore, every country can become a party to only the Hague Act, only the Geneva Act, or both. If a country signs up to only one of the Acts, then applicants from that country can consequently only use the Hague system to obtain protection for their designs in other countries which are signed up to the same Act. For example, the European Union has only signed the Geneva Act. Therefore, all applicants from the European Union which qualify to use the Hague system can only get protection in countries which have also signed up to the Geneva Act or to the Hague and the Geneva Act.
Currently (Status: 15 April 2015) there are 62 Contracting Parties which are members of one or both Acts. Recently, the United States and Japan, as two of the biggest economies in the word, have jointed the Hague System, which is a high enrichment for the system. WIPO is expecting that the accession of the United States and Japan will encourage other countries to join the system. To find out more watch the video.
[embed]http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZjHltCMgSM[/embed]
Qualification to use the Hague system
To be entitled to file an application, an applicant must fulfill the following criteria:
- The applicant must be a national of a Contracting Party or a Member State of an intergovernmental organization which is a Contracting Party
- or have a domicile in the territory of a Contracting Party
- or have a real and effective industrial or commercial establishment in the territory of a Contracting Party.
- only under the Geneva Act, an international application may be filed on the basis of habitual residence in a Contracting Party
Persons, who are not qualified to use the Hague system, are only able to file an application at the national level.
Contents of the Application
The international application must be filed in English, French or Spanish on the official form provided by WIPO or with the electronic filing interface available on the WIPO website. The application has to contain a reproduction of the industrial designs and a designation of the Contracting Parties where protection is required. An international application may include up to 100 different designs, but, they have to belong to the same class of the Locarno Classification.
The applicant may request that publication of the designs be deferred for a period which cannot exceed 12 months (under the 1960 Act) or 30 months (under the 1999 Act) from the filing date or, where priority is claimed, from the priority date.
Fees
An international application is subject to the payment of a basic fee; a publication fee, and for each designated Contracting Party, either a standard fee or an individual fee. A schedule of fees, as well as an automatic fee calculator, is available: here (www.wipo.int/hague/en/fees).
Examination and registration procedure
WIPO examines the formal requirements of the application, for example, the quality of the reproductions of the industrial designs and the payment of the required fees. WIPO informs the applicant immediately if there are any faults. Then, the applicant has the chance to correct the irregularities within three months. After the examination WIPO is recording the design in the International Register and publish it in the International Designs Bulletin.
It must be stressed that the International Bureau of WIPO does not examine any substantive ground of refusal that means neither if is in fact new nor if it has individual character. After the registration the international protection of the design is valid for five years. It can be renewed for an additional period of five years, in respect of each designated Contracting Party, up to the expiry of the total term of protection allowed by those Contracting Parties respective laws.
