100 Years of the Hague Convention: What’s Next for Designs?: An Interview with Alessia Parassina

Alessia Parassina (Brandstock, Germany)

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Hague Convention, a streamlined process for international design protection that allows applicants to file a single application for protection across several jurisdictions. This milestone anniversary coincides with new reforms seeking to modernize European design law, creating an opportunity to both reflect on the history of design protection and look ahead to what comes next.

Alessia Parassina (Brandstock, Germany) will moderate a session at the 2025 Leadership Meeting titled Modernizing Design Laws: Navigating the New EU Reforms and Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Hague Convention. She recently sat down with the INTA Bulletin to preview some of the session’s key discussion topics, provide context on recent trends in design protection, and share her perspective on what makes INTA’s Leadership Meeting such a valuable experience for registrants.

This year—and as part of your session at the Leadership Meeting—we celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the Hague Convention. In your view, what is the biggest impact the Hague Convention has had on how designs are protected around the world?
The biggest impact of the Hague Convention is how it has helped promote the protection of design registrations worldwide. Indeed, systems like this—including the Madrid system for trademarks—work by creating one single, universal application, which leads to a registration that covers multiple jurisdictions. It’s super easy, very fast, and provides very wide coverage.

No doubt, the Hague system has seen a real boost over the last few years in terms of the number of applications, registrations, and jurisdictions covered. Both China and the U.S. have joined—you can imagine the impact of that! Saudi Arabia has also joined, and Australia might be joining in the future, as it has agreed to make efforts to join the system! You can cover a wide number of jurisdictions with just one application. This is super important for not only big corporations, but also small and medium enterprises (SMEs), seeking coverage for their IP rights.

I’ve often felt, over the past 10 to 20 years, since I’ve worked as an IP lawyer, that design rights were kept a bit in the shadows. However, the celebration of the 100-year anniversary of the Hague Convention and the EU design reform (which is discussed in length in the feature article How EU Design Law Reform Protects Designs in the Digital Age published in today’s issue on the INTA Bulletin) signify that there is now a big, big push to bring design rights into the sunlight where, in my humble opinion, they deserve to be.

Looking ahead to your session at the Leadership Meeting, what can you tell us about the range of perspectives that the speakers will bring to the discussion?
I’m very enthusiastic about the session and the speakers. We have the honor of having Grégoire Bisson joining our panel. He’s the director of the Hague System for the International Registration of Industrial Designs. You can only imagine the passion he’s devoted to the Hague system! He is dedicated to not just keeping the system steady, but evolving, so that it will be around for another 100 years.

We also have Margaret Baumgartner (Genesys, USA) and Anna Dalla Val (Amazon, USA) representing the corporate point of view and Karen Gaunt (Dinsmore IP, USA) with Helma van de Langenberg (Novagraaf, Netherlands) from private practice to bring a full range of perspectives.

The panel will be very interactive and pose several questions about design rights that I think many registrants will have asked themselves at least once. We’ll look at how the Hague Convention and the EU design reform have boosted the profile of design rights within the IP ecosystem. What’s the impact of the rise of design rights? How do outside counsel advise their clients on filing a design rather than a copyright? How do corporate lawyers feel about designs? How do they consider using them? Do they include this form of protection in their budget, or do they find designs to be obscure? It will be interesting to see if any minds are changed following this discussion.

The panel will also delve into the latest EU design reforms. What are some of the current trends in design law and how do you see them shaping the future of how designs are protected in Europe and worldwide?
This is a topic I could discuss for hours, but let’s start by acknowledging we are in a very modern, dynamic world where we are moving from only having static products like utensils and machines, to a world of virtual reality, which is full of things like images, interfaces, and buttons requiring design protection.

The real trend that we are seeing is that design law is moving away from centering concrete products in favor of digital designs. With the new EU design reforms, it’s much easier to register animated designs because the product no longer needs to be represented in no more than seven views. That limit will no longer exist, and the impact will be enormous.

If I had to summarize the EU design reform in a nutshell, I would say it offers freedom to expand the protection to non-static designs. This is a huge innovation!

The Hague Convention and the new EU system are aligned in many ways. What is one key common practice, and one key difference between the systems that registrants should be aware of heading into the discussion?
One practice they both share is deferment of publication. This is particularly important when it comes to keeping a design novel and secret. Both the EU system and the Hague system also allow deferment for a period of 30 months. It’s important to keep this in mind from a practical and strategic point of view. Going back to corporates who need to decide what to do: Must the design remain a secret? Is copyright protection preferable, etc.?  Having this harmonization is important. It allows you to have confidence and trust in your files.

While purely digital designs were technically allowed under the previous EU legislation—albeit without clear guidance and only in practice—the upcoming reforms will expressly allow new formats such as video and 3D files. By contrast, these formats are not yet accepted within the Hague system.

From a practical point of view, this makes a big difference. It forces both corporate and private practice lawyers to get creative. To attempt to prepare the same application, and then registration, using a single video, for example, may not currently be achievable within the Hague system, and you end up obtaining two slightly different forms of protection for the same product or design. But, spoiler, this might get better in the next few months!

Your Leadership Meeting session will also highlight some recent top design law cases. What is one key trend emerging from these cases that registrants should take note of?
Designs were long treated as the Cinderella of IP rights! Often, a design registration was awarded with basically no examination—as though it were less valuable than trademarks. Of course, this is no longer true, and small differences between designs, specifically registered designs, are important.

Designs are getting bigger, becoming broader, and, in our opinion, are providing stronger protection. This is the trend, and the important thing is that we’re paying attention to it. Similar to what happens to trademarks: one needs to really pay attention to the minimum requirements. This is the trend: stronger attention, stronger protection, and stronger coverage, right?

The Marks & Spencer v. Aldi case shows exactly the opposite. This was a design infringement case before the UK High Court (involving the design of two gin bottles). The decision was ultimately about the overall impression on the informed user. Sufficient to say, the ALDI bottle was confusingly similar to the MARKS & SPENCER one, amounting to infringement that needed to be enforced. This is particularly relevant, because, if you read the decision closely, it highlights how similar the assessment of overall impression in design law can feel to the trademark reasoning. And so, finally, we’re arriving at a space where it becomes clear that the content of the protection is the same. Cinderella has put on her slipper!

Also here, I do not want to spoil the Puma case. Here, Rihanna, as Puma’s creative director, posted images of a pair of shoes on her Instagram. This was sufficient to say it’s already divulgated, it’s not novel, and the EU General Court ruling upheld the invalidation of a PUMA shoe design.

So, the trend is: We need to pay attention!

As a member of the 2025 Leadership Meeting Project Team, in your view, what makes attending the Meeting such a valuable experience for INTA member volunteers?
I find all of INTA’s Meetings and events to be very interesting, but I specifically find the Leadership Meeting to hold exceptional value. It packs in so much value in just a couple of days. The topics of the sessions are very interesting, and because the people who participate are our peers, they ask questions that are on all our minds. Whenever I attend Leadership Meeting, I feel like the topics are tailor-made for me.

These three or four days at Leadership Meeting provide a lot of souvenirs, as they say in France! You take home more than just a lot of good memories—a lot of good knowledge and enhanced knowledge. If you are passionate about IP, Leadership Meeting provides a lot of added value.

Although every effort has been made to verify the accuracy of this article, readers are urged to check independently on matters of specific concern or interest. The opinions expressed in this interview are that of the person being interviewed and do not purport to reflect the views of INTA or its members.

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