The ID5 has published a Handbook offering comprehensive guidance on how design novelty is assessed by examiners across the five Partner Offices.
All five offices conduct substantive examination proceedings to determine the novelty of a design, with the comparison between a submitted design and prior designs forming the core of this process. While this comparison is fundamental, it is by no means simple — each office has developed its own distinct practices and criteria for reaching a determination.
With the goal of fostering greater clarity and transparency, the project mapped and compared how each ID5 office approaches the question of what makes a design novel and how that assessment is conducted in practice.
The Handbook sets out the relevant legal framework and illustrates examination practices through four concrete examples:
• Designs applied to different articles
• Designs applied to different articles sharing a common function in the claimed parts
• Animated graphical user interfaces (GUIs)
• Component and partial designs
The guide is intended as a practical reference for examiners, legal practitioners, and rights holders looking to understand how design novelty examination works in the ID5 offices.
