Judgment of the Court of Justice of 18 December 2025, Deity Shoes (C-323/24).
1. Facts
Deity Shoes (hereinafter, Deity) is a company based in Elche that holds several EU footwear design patents. Its designs are created using catalogs from Chinese trading companies, which offer pre-designed components and allow for customization of various aspects of the footwear, such as color, material, and the placement of buckles, laces, and other decorative elements.
On December 10, 2021, Deity filed a lawsuit with the Commercial Court No. 1 of Alicante for infringement of several registered and unregistered EU designs relating to shoes against Mundorama Confort and Stay Design.
On April 12, 2022, the defendant companies filed a counterclaim, requesting the annulment of said designs. They argued that the disputed designs had not been the subject of any innovation, since Deity merely marketed products offered by the Chinese trading companies, and that they did not meet the requirements of novelty and individual character.
On May 24, 2022, Deity responded to the counterclaim.
The Commercial Court No. 1 of Alicante raised several doubts about the interpretation of Regulation No. 6/2002 in the sector in question, and therefore decided to suspend the proceedings and refer the following preliminary questions to the CJEU:
“1) For a design to be protected under Regulation No 6/2002, is it necessary for there to be genuine design activity, such that the design is the result of the intellectual effort of its creator? And, in this respect, can the combination of components based on models whose appearance characteristics are largely predetermined by trading companies be considered genuine design activity, such that modifications to certain elements must be considered occasional and incidental?”
2) In relation to the above,… can the entirety or part of the appearance characteristics of a product resulting from the customization of designs offered by Chinese trading companies, according to their catalogs, be considered to have a unique character in accordance with Article 6 of Regulation No 6/2002, when the design holder's activity is limited to marketing those designs in the European Economic Area (EEA) without modifications or with minor modifications to components (such as soles, rivets, laces, buckles, etc.) and the appearance characteristics are largely predetermined by the trading companies? For these purposes, is it relevant that the components are also not designed by the holder of the Community design, but are instead offered by the trading company itself in its catalog?
3) Should Article 14 [of Regulation No 6/2002] be interpreted as meaning that someone who, based on a design offered by trading companies according to a catalog, has merely customized that previous design by modifying components also offered by the trader that were not designed by the proprietor of the Community design or model, may be considered the author of the design? In this respect, is it required to demonstrate a certain degree of customization in order to prove that the final form deviates significantly from the original design and thus be able to claim authorship?
4) Notwithstanding the foregoing, in a case such as the present one, given the special characteristics of footwear designed from samples provided by trading companies and, insofar as the “design” is limited to the selection of previous designs from a sample book and, where applicable, to the variation of some of its components, within the catalog offered by the trading company, all following fashion trends, it must be understood that these fashion trends: a) limit the author's freedom in such a way that small differences between the registered (or unregistered) design and another model may be sufficient to give a differentiated overall impression or, on the contrary, b) affect the unique character of the registered (or unregistered) design in such a way that those elements or components will have less importance in the overall impression they produce on the informed user insofar as they result from known fashion trends when compared with another model?”
2. Pronouncements
The judgment examines the preliminary questions in two separate groups: the first and third, on the one hand, and the second and fourth, on the other, setting out its interpretation of the corresponding articles of Regulation No. 6/2002.
As regards the first and third preliminary questions, the judgment concludes that Articles 4 to 6, in light of Article 14 of the Regulation, must be interpreted as meaning that, in order to enjoy the protection conferred on a Community design, the proprietor or author of that design is not required to demonstrate, in addition to the fulfillment of the requirements of novelty and individual character, that it results from a minimum degree of design.
As regards the second and fourth preliminary questions, the judgment concludes that Article 6 of Regulation No. 6/2002 This should be interpreted to mean that the fact that certain designs exhibit appearance characteristics predetermined by a model proposed in a supplier's catalog to the designer of those designs, and that the modifications introduced by the designer to said designs are merely specific and pertain to components proposed by that supplier, cannot, in itself, preclude the recognition of their individual character. Furthermore, fashion trends cannot limit the designer's degree of freedom, such that minor differences between one or more previous designs and the design in question can be sufficient for the latter to produce a different overall impression on the informed user than that produced by those previous designs, and thus, to possess an individual character. The characteristics of a design that result from these trends cannot be of minor importance in the overall impression that the design produces on the informed user.
3. Comment
The judgment confirms that for EU designs, genuine design activity resulting from intellectual effort by the author is not required, but only the requirements of novelty and individual character set out in Article 4(1) of the Regulation No. 6/2002.
The ruling also clarifies that when assessing whether an EU design has individual character, the design's appearance features that derive from existing fashion trends must be assessed in the same way as other features by comparing the overall impression the design makes on the informed user with that made by an earlier design.
The ruling is of great importance for sectors with low-cost products and high sales volumes (such as fashion and footwear).low-cost”), since it confirms that the protection requirements for them are the same as those required for other sectors, regardless of the creative process or the greater or lesser intellectual effort of their author, thereby providing legal certainty to these sectors.
Pedro SaturioPartner-Associate, Brands area
