Five years of design invalidity at OHIM
In September 2003 OHIM received its first request for a declaration of invalidity of a registered Community design. Since then around 580 requests have been submitted. Invalidity proceedings before OHIM are most popular in Spain, which is the country of origin for a quarter of all requests submitted so far, followed by Germany with a share of 17%.

Law firms in Spain and Germany were also the most popular choice for invalidity cases: the majority of all invalidity requests were submitted by either Spanish (34%) or German (24%) representatives. In a small number of cases, no legal representative was appointed.

Concerning the grounds for invalidity claimed in the requests, the most frequently used by far was an alleged lack of novelty or lack of individual character of the contested Community design; this ground was claimed in around 90% of the cases.

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