Asian applications- an analysis

APAA, the Asian Patent Attorneys Association, held their Design Committee meeting in Jeju, Korea on 17th October under the joint chairmanship of Minako Mizuno and Peter Heathcote.  The meeting concentrated on practical issues of what can be filed as a design, and included whether:

• designs are available for separate component parts of products,
• designs are available for integral parts of products,
• designs are available for icons,
• multiple designs are available,
• sets are available,
• dashed lines can be used,
• statements of novelty are required.

 You can find the extremely detailed sets of responses from the official groups of Australia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam on APAA's 2010 website here.