For protection design Cosmetic products benefit from comprehensive legal protection, which guarantees enhanced protection in accordance with industrial property and trademark regulations. However, before deciding in what form to register the results of intellectual activity, it is necessary to consider the merits of each option. Thus, designs for cosmetic products can be granted protection as trademarks, industrial designs, and the design can also be protected under the Copyright Act.
The main advantages of registering a trademark include:
- the possibility of extending the period of its legal protection an unlimited number of times;
- variety of registered objects and simplified requirements for the novelty of the object in comparison with the novelty of industrial designs.
Registration of a cosmetic product design as an industrial design is advantageous in that its copyright holder does not have the obligation to use the registered industrial design within the time limits specified by law. That is, after receiving a patent, the copyright holder can, at his own discretion, dispose of the object during the entire period of protection, while with respect to trademarks, early termination of their validity is possible due to non-use of the designation at the request of interested parties.
If the design solution for cosmetic products is of a creative nature (Article 1259), then it is protected under copyright law. In accordance with paragraph 1 of Art. 1228 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, the author of the result of intellectual activity is the citizen whose creative work created such a result or a legal entity. In this case, joint ownership is built using corporate and/or contractual models. Decisions in the first model are regulated through corporate mechanisms, while the second model involves the conclusion of an agreement between copyright holders. At the same time, the agreement takes into account the distribution of shares, the procedure for managing property and disposing of rights, as well as the procedure for making decisions and changing the composition of copyright holders.
The advantage of this type of protection is that the creation, exercise and protection of copyright does not require registration of the work or compliance with any formalities. In accordance with Art. 1270 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, the author of a work has the exclusive right to own, use and dispose of his work of design.
Thus, the advantages of complex object registration are that:
- registration of the design of cosmetic products in several industries at once allows its copyright holder to eliminate the possibility of a conflict of rights with another entity;
- in the event of early termination of one type of protection, the validity of the registration in another area will continue (for example, if the registration certificate for a trademark is canceled for some reason, this will not affect the validity of the patent for an industrial design, much less copyright).
In conclusion, I would like to add that legal protection of design developments is necessary to achieve a competitive advantage in the market and the successful development of commercial activities of cosmetic companies. Otherwise, they can be taken advantage of by unscrupulous competitors, which can lead not only to a deterioration in the company’s reputation, a decrease in profits, but even in some cases to the loss of business.
Therefore, comprehensive protection of the design of cosmetic products reduces the risk of conflicts of interest with competitors, since it informs them of the exclusive rights of copyright holders, strengthening their position in the market, which may be a prerequisite for fair competition of similar products.
