Assessing a design’s individual character before starting a business in Georgia

Individual character is assessed not by looking at a single detail, but at the design’s overall appearance. The comparison focuses in particular on shape, lines, contours, colours, surface texture, materials, proportions and the arrangement of prominent elements. The benchmark is the overall impression on an informed user of the product in question. The greater the degree of design freedom, the more clearly the new design will generally need to stand apart from previously known designs. If that freedom is heavily restricted by technical, functional or market-standard requirements, differences in features that can be freely designed may carry greater weight. Features that are barely perceptible in normal use or are dictated solely by technical requirements contribute less to the protectable overall impression. The assessment should include relevant examples from design registers, product catalogues, markets, websites, trade fairs and other public sources. The dominant similarities and differences are then assessed from the informed user’s perspective. A mere change in colour, dimensions or an incidental detail does not automatically create a different overall impression. The assessment should relate specifically to the views and features that will later be shown in the design application.