In the present case, the Court of Justice is ruling on a reference for a preliminary ruling arising from a dispute between various companies whose business consists of the sale of footwear.

Deity Shoes is a company that holds several Community designs relating to footwear. Its designs are created using catalogues from third trading companies which, based on lists of predefined elements, allow for the customisation of various components of the footwear (colour, material, buckles, laces, etc.). On 10 December 2021, the aforementioned company filed a claim in Spain against Mundorama Confort and Stay Design for infringement of several registered and unregistered designs relating to various shoe models.

However, the defendants filed a counterclaim seeking a declaration of invalidity of those designs on the grounds that they were not novel, as Deity Shoes merely marketed products offered by trading companies. Therefore, these designs did not meet the requirements of novelty nor individual character.

The Spanish courts held that the characteristics of the models marketed by Deity Shoes were indeed predetermined by the models offered by its suppliers, such that any subsequent modifications were of an ancillary nature, as these were already proposed by the trading companies based on the components featured in their catalogues. It also acknowledges the limited scope for action available to designers in this sector, where price and cost reduction play a very significant role.

Against this backdrop, the Spanish courts suspended the proceedings and referred a series of questions for a preliminary ruling to the Court of Justice, in order to determine whether the combination of components based on models whose visual characteristics are largely predetermined by trading companies can be considered a genuine design activity, and whether such genuine activity is an essential requirement for considering that design to be the result of its creator’s intellectual effort. They also question whether the appearance of a product resulting from the customisation of designs offered by third-party companies can be considered unique when the design owner’s activity is limited to marketing those designs, and whether a certain degree of customisation is required to claim authorship.

The Court of Justice ruled that, in order to enjoy design protection, it is sufficient for the requirements of novelty and individual character to be met; the designer is not required to demonstrate that the design meets a minimum standard of creativity. Consequently, a Community design may be composed of various prior designs, provided that the resulting design does not produce the same overall impression on the informed user as the prior designs. Furthermore, in cases where the designer’s freedom is restricted by the technical function of the product, the presence of minor differences will be sufficient to produce a different overall impression on the informed user.

Furthermore, the Court of Justice states that fashion trends cannot limit the designer’s degree of freedom, so that minor differences between designs may be sufficient to produce a different overall impression on informed users from that produced by those earlier designs. The features of a design resulting from such trends cannot be of minor importance to the overall impression that design produces on such users.

Judgment of the Court of Justice (Second Chamber) of 18 December 2025 in Case C-323/24