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The handsoffmydesign competition is organized by OHIM, the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market, in conjunction with the European Observatory on Counterfeiting and Piracy and is endorsed by the Cumulus International Association of Universities and Colleges of Art, Design and Media.
The Jury of the handsoffmydesign competition, would like to thank all of the participants for their great work and creative ideas!
Almost 60 student and professional designers took part in the contest and there were so many original and high quality proposals that it was not always easy to reach a final decision, but of course, this is what we had to do and our final decision is as follows:
The winning entries are:
Design students:
1st Prize: Julien Moreau, from the ECV Atlantique school in France.
Interview with the winner:
2nd Prize: Nejc Levstik, from the Academy of theathre, radio, film and television in Slovenia.Interview with the winner:
3rd Prize: Lauri Särak, Daniel Levi Viinalass and Elmo Soomets, from the Tartu Art College in Estonia.Interview with the winner:
Professional designers:
1st Prize: Gergely Szőnyi and Tamás Helényi from Green Lake Pictures in Hungary.
Interview with the winners:
2nd Prize: Christoph Brehme of German nationality from Piopictures in Italy.
Interview with the winner:
3rd Prize: Dimitris Haidas from dhaidas in Greece.
Interview with the winner:
The Award Ceremony
The names of the participants of the List of honours will be published as soon as any outstanding copyright issues have been cleared with the authors of the proposals. A mail has been sent out to the participants that the Jury would wish to see included in this list.It has been an exciting experience to see so many creative and high quality proposals and again, the Jury wishes to thank all participants for their enthusiasm and engagement in the handsoffmydesign competition and wish you all the luck for the future!
Thank you,
MR CHRISTIAN GUELLERIN
President of Cumulus International Association of Universities and Colleges of Art, Design and Media, Director, L'École de design Nantes Atlantique, FranceMR RAIMO NIKKANEN
Professor Industrial and Strategic Design School of Art and Design, Aalto University, FinlandMS LUISA COLLINA
Professor Industrial Design Politecnico di Milano, ItalyMRS RECTOR SIGNE KIVI
Professor, Rector Estonian Academy of Arts, EstoniaMRS ULRIKA RENDEL
Communication Officer, Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM)MR PHIL LEWIS
Expert on Counterfeiting, Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM)MR JORGE NOVAIS
Expert on Counterfeiting, European CommissionMR ARTHUR FORBES
Expert on Counterfeiting, European CommissionMRS DELPHINE SARFATI-SOBREIRA
Stakeholder of the European Observatory on Counterfeiting and Piracy, UNIFABMR MICHAEL ELLIS
Stakeholder of the European Observatory on Counterfeiting and Piracy, BeiersdorfMR DANIEL FRIEDLAENDER
Stakeholder of the European Observatory on Counterfeiting and Piracy, IFPI
Who could participate?
Students & Professionals in two different categories.
What had to be submitted:
1 video + 1 poster:
that can be used as guerilla/viral marketing tools, aimed at illustrating the dangers and/or negative
impact of counterfeits and illegal copies.
Three prizes in each category & special recognition:
to other outstanding proposals by means of an "honorary list".
Registration before:
15 October, 24:00 CEST (2011)
REGISTRATION FOR THE COMPETITION IS CLOSED!Submittal of proposals before:
1 November, 24:00 CET (2011)
DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS FOR THE COMPETITION IS CLOSED!For more details:
Competition rules Form of registration & Steps to follow Signed declaration Members of the Jury The handsoffmydesign competition is organized by OHIM, the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market, in conjunction with the European Observatory on Counterfeiting and Piracy and is endorsed by the Cumulus International Association of Universities and Colleges of Art, Design and Media.
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Case study: bObles
When you have a good product, somebody will copy it!
When Bolette Blædel was on maternity leave with her first child back in 1999, the lack of furniture that developed children’s motor function but which at the same lived up to aesthetic requirements sparked a creative brainstorming with her sister Louise, and was later to result in the now successful children’s furniture in the shape of abstract animals.
After the launch of bObles in 2005, the combination of functionality and an original geometric and not least colourful design was soon in demand from many dealers, and not only in Denmark.
Fortunately, the sisters, now directors of the company, who both took the chance of taking a break from their otherwise good jobs (as an architect and a fashion manufacturer, respectively), turned to advisors who were aware of the product;s potential and the importance of protecting their IPR.
REGISTERED AS COMMUNITY DESIGNS
And so in 2006, bObles was registered as a trade mark and the design of the ‘tumbling furniture’ was registered firstly in Denmark and then as a Community Design, which is the design protection that is valid all over the European Union.
In Europe, a one stop registration will give protection for the entire European Union and for a reasonable price, and this was an obvious choice for a company like bObles, who had plans to expand.
As Louise Blædel says, “When you have a good product, somebody will copy it”, and this is why precautions must be taken. She does not take counterfeiting as a pat on the back, however, because the imitations she has seen are not just infringing their rights – they are also not at all of the same high quality.
However, she does believe that registering a design has a preventive effect and that they would have been exposed to much more counterfeiting, had they not protected their IPR.
Louise Blædel also believes that part of their success is due to the fact that they were aware of IPR from a very early stage with bObles, and they look forward to the process in the future as bObles extends its brand and design -
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Plagiarius – the prize you don’t want to win!
For more than thirty years now an award has been given by Action Plagiarius (a registered society based in Germany) to the manufacturers or distributors making or selling the most flagrant design imitations. The Plagiarius award jury present the “winners” every year at the Frankfurter trade fair.
The aim is to inform all parties affected – designers and enterprises as well as politicians, legislators and consumers about the extent, damages and dangers incurred by fakes and plagiarisms. Action Plagiarius should not and does not want to dispense justice but rather likes to inform about injustice.
What is plagiarism…?
Plagiarism is taking someone else’s work and passing it off as your own. The word plagiarism comes from the Latin word 'plagiarius' meaning kidnapper, which is exactly what the plagiarist is doing - kidnapping or taking possession of another’s intellectual property.
…and what are the dangers?
When a design is copied, harm is done to many people and to society on the whole in many different ways.
· Let’s start with the designer: the investigation, know-how, hard work and skills of the designer of the original will not pay off since that investment will bear no fruit in a copy. The copies will congest the market, since they will sell at a lower price: hardly any investment was needed, there have been little or no controls and on many occasions materials of inferior quality are used. The designer has clearly lost control not only of the use of the product he designed, but possibly also of his/her reputation. And certainly, he/she will not be able to make a living by designing items if they are copied.
· Then let’s go on to the consumer. A product that has been produced without guarantees of regular controls, with the only aim of making quick profit, how safe do you think such a product can be? Would you let your child play with a copied toy? Would you shave with a copied razor, even when the price was significantly lower than that for the original? Furthermore, as a consumer, do you not also have some responsibility to know what you buy, where it was made and under what circumstances?
· Now let’s talk about the society and the economy and how they are affected. It is clear that the enterprise which manufactures the original design has invested money and know-how, and now depends on an equivalent market success in order to secure jobs and further innovation. What do you think will happen when there is no pay-back on the investment made? And something else to think about: what kind of working conditions and employees do you think have been used to produce such a cheap copy? And one step further, how do you think enterprises will have to adapt in order to be able to compete with such competitors?
· Let’s also talk about more abstract concepts such as creativity and development. What will society be like when the creative people can no longer make a living by innovating? How much investment will be made in creativity and innovation when there is no pay-off? What kind of development will there be?Some facts and figures
The European Commission estimates that plagiarisms and fakes cause worldwide economic losses of several hundred billion (!) Euros as well as the loss of several hundred thousand jobs each year!! The explosive tension caused by this problem is accelerated by globalisation, modern technologies and anonymous distribution channels such as the World Wide Web.
In the EU, custom statistics for 2006 show that customs seized more than 250 million fake products at the EU borders (2005: 75 million). South East Asia, especially China, is demonstrably the ‘Number 1’ for manufacturing copied products, due to low wages. That said, certainly plagiarism also exists within the European Union as well as in the rest of the world.So what happens with the Plagiarius Prize “winners”:
Well, as you may appreciate, the so-called “winners” of the Plagiarius award have up to now never been present at the Prize Ceremony in order to receive their award. Many of them have already been prosecuted judicially or have at least had their fake goods stopped at the border.
However, the names of the winners and the recipients of the ‘distinctions’ together with photographs of their copies are published on the Plagiarius website. http://www.plagiarius.com/ and it is also possible to visit and see the originals and copied products at the Plagarius Museum in Solingen, Germany.
