Prior-art intelligence
What actually kills EU designs
Every prior-art reference the EUIPO weighed in first-instance invalidity proceedings, typed and ranked. Web disclosures — invisible to the EUIPO register — are the dominant killer. Counts are decision-level (a case citing many links counts once).
Scope: 3,392 first-instance invalidity decisions · 2,289 invalidations.
Prior-art types, by decisions that cited them
“Kill rate” = invalidations ÷ merits decisions that cited the type. “% of invalidations” = share of all 2,289 invalidations whose record cited the type (a decision can cite several types, so these sum past 100%).
Kill rate by type (≥ 20 merits decisions)
Low-volume types omitted to avoid noise. The headline finding: the types with the highest kill rates are not always the most common.
Web-disclosure deep dive
1,293 RCD invalidations — 56% of all first-instance invalidations — cited a web disclosure as prior art. None of these are visible in the EUIPO design register. The single biggest web source is Amazon, behind 620 invalidations.
Top web sources behind invalidations
Sources are canonicalised from free text (regional Amazon domains and brand/URL variants merged; “Internet Archive (Wayback Machine)” denotes an archived page, the evidentiary mechanism rather than the platform). Bar = invalidations.
Recent designs killed by a web disclosure
| Date | Case | Holder (RCD owner) | Sector | Web source(s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-05-26 | 000132264 | Shandong Qiyue Environmental Protection Technology Co.,Ltd | 23 Fluid-distribution, sanitary, heating | YouTube |
| 2026-05-21 | 000131404 | Jiahe Lin | 06 Furnishing | Amazon |
| 2026-05-21 | 000132104 | Shenzhen Damai Network Technology Co., Ltd. | 02 Clothing & haberdashery | Amazon |
| 2026-05-19 | 000128578 | Washtower IP B.V. | 06 Furnishing | Internet Archive (Wayback Machine) |
| 2026-05-19 | 000128637 | Washtower IP B.V. | 06 Furnishing | Internet Archive (Wayback Machine) |
| 2026-05-19 | 000128655 | Washtower IP B.V. | 06 Furnishing | Internet Archive (Wayback Machine) |
| 2026-05-13 | 000131325 | HaoJun Zhu | 09 Packages & containers | YouTube |
| 2026-05-06 | 000129804 | Mirosław Mytnik StudioDelta.pl | 25 Building units & construction | Internet Archive (Wayback Machine) |
| 2026-05-06 | 000132064 | Han Sheng | 15 Machines | Amazon |
| 2026-04-30 | 000131885 | Yuan Li Ug (haftungsbeschränkt) | 21 Games, toys, tents & sports | YouTube |
| 2026-04-29 | 000131246 | Life Vac LLC | 24 Medical & laboratory | Internet Archive (Wayback Machine) |
| 2026-04-29 | 000131944 | Jinsong Liu | 08 Tools & hardware | Amazon |
| 2026-04-29 | 000129622 | Squar3D Aps | 21 Games, toys, tents & sports | Internet Archive (Wayback Machine), legebyen.dk |
| 2026-04-29 | 000129681 | Squar3D Aps | 21 Games, toys, tents & sports | Internet Archive (Wayback Machine), legebyen.dk |
| 2026-04-24 | 000128735 | Oü Repston | 06 Furnishing | Internet Archive (Wayback Machine) |
| 2026-04-23 | 000131089 | Rongrong Gao | 24 Medical & laboratory | Amazon |
| 2026-04-23 | 000130850 | Michael Amara | 14 Recording, telecom & data processing | Internet Archive (Wayback Machine) |
| 2026-04-22 | 000131964 | Shenzhen Debaisite Trading Co., Ltd. | 03 Travel goods & cases | |
| 2026-04-21 | 000131548 | Wenwei Ding | 04 Brushes & brushware | Amazon |
| 2026-04-20 | 000131904 | Lang Huang | 11 Jewellery & decorative articles | Amazon |