New measure for acknowledging claim of priority of design patents comes into force

On claiming priority of design patents, in the future, only when it is discovered that the date of a previous application or the date of publication of relevant data falls between the claimed priority date and the filing date of a later application, may the competent authority decide whether to recognize the priority claim or not, based on verification documents. If it is not discovered during the search, in principle, the priority claim will be published in the Patent Gazette as requested by the applicant.

If the applicant makes several priority claims at once, based on the aforementioned principle, the claims will still all be published in the Patent Gazette. However, this does not mean the design patent in question may (always) acquire multiple priority claims or part of such claims. It depends on whether the content of the priority claims are against the rules relating to “identical designs.” Substantial determination will be in place if prior art is found to be set between the filing date of application and the priority date.

The measure was implemented on the date of publication (August 1, 2019) of Vol. 46, Issue. 22 of the Patent Gazette.