CHAPTER II |
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Article 17 |
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(1) [Notification of Additional Elements] Any Contracting Party whose Office is an Examining Office and whose law, at the time that it becomes party to this Act, requires that an application for the grant of protection to an industrial design contain any of the elements specified in paragraph (2) in order for that application to be accorded a filing date may, in a declaration, notify the Director General of those elements.
(2) [Permitted Additional Elements] The elements that may be notified pursuant to paragraph (1) are the following:
(i) indications concerning the identity of the creator of the industrial design that is the subject of that application, as prescribed;
(ii) a brief description of the reproduction or of the characteristic features of the industrial design that is the subject of that application, as prescribed;
(iii) a claim, as prescribed.
[Article 17, continued]
(3) [Obligation to Include Such Elements] Where the international application contains the designation of a Contracting Party that has made a notification under paragraph (1), it shall also contain any element that was the subject of that notification.
Article 18 |
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(1) [Notification of Special Requirements] Any Contracting Party whose Office is an Examining Office and whose law, at the time that it becomes party to this Act, requires that designs that are the subject of the same application conform to a requirement of unity of invention, unity of design, unity of production, or unity of use, or belong to the same set or composition of items or that only one independent and distinct invention may be claimed in a single application, may, in a declaration, notify the Director General accordingly.
(2) [Effect of Notification] Any such declaration shall enable the Office of the Contracting Party that has made the notification to refuse the effects of the international registration pursuant to Article 11(1) pending compliance with the requirement notified by that Contracting Party. It shall not however affect the right of an applicant to include two or more industrial designs in an international application designating the said Contracting Party in accordance with Article 5(3).
(3) [Further Fees Payable on Division of Registration] Where, following a notification of refusal in accordance with paragraph (2), an international registration is divided before the Office concerned in order to overcome a ground of refusal stated in the notification, that Office shall be entitled to charge a fee in respect of each additional international application that would have been necessary in order to avoid that ground of refusal.
Article 19 |
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(1) [Transmittal of Confidential Copies] In the case of an international registration whose publication is deferred pursuant to the provisions of Article 10, the International Bureau shall, immediately after registration has been effected, send a copy of the international registration to each designated Examining Office that has notified the International Bureau that it wishes to receive such a copy.
(2) [Obligation of Office to Maintain Confidentiality] The Office shall, until publication of the international registration by the International Bureau, keep in confidence each international registration of which a copy has been transmitted to it by the International Bureau and may use the said copy only for the purpose of the examination of other applications for the protection of industrial designs filed in or for the Contracting Party for which the Office is competent. In particular, it may not divulge the contents of any such international registration to any person outside the Office, including the persons in whose names such other applications are filed, except for the purposes of an administrative or legal proceeding involving a conflict over entitlement to file the international application on which the international registration is based. In the case of such a proceeding, the contents of the international registration may only be disclosed in confidence to the parties involved in the proceeding who shall be bound to respect the confidentiality of the disclosure.
Article 20 |
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Notwithstanding Article 9(3)(a), where an industrial design has been amended in proceedings before an Examining Office in order to satisfy the condition of novelty, so that the reproduction of the industrial design for which protection is granted in the Contracting Party concerned differs from the reproduction published by the International Bureau, that Office shall be entitled to charge a fee for the publication of the amended reproduction.
