DesignVerdict · Annual Report · Edition v0.4

EU Design Invalidity, 2018–2026

A free quantitative review of every published EUIPO Registered Community Design invalidity decision and Board of Appeal ruling on designs — every decision's text read into a structured record by an LLM extraction layer, cross-checked against EUIPO's own published statistics and Cornwell's Edinburgh dataset.

4,665

decisions analysed, 2018–2026

4,607

LLM-extracted from the decision text (98.8%)

69.1%

first-instance invalidation rate (merits-only)

56.7%

of invalidations cite a web disclosure the register never sees

Free PDF · email required

Get the full report — outcomes, grounds, Locarno mix, BoA appeal pipeline.

Drop your email and the PDF opens in a new tab. We'll also let you know when the next edition lands and when saved-search email alerts ship.

No spam. Unsubscribe in one click. Privacy: we only use your email to send report updates + alert digests when you save searches.

What's inside

Invalidation rate by year— merits-only denominator, read from each decision's dispositive outcome; why this edition's headline differs from v0.3, explained.
Who wins: representatives — firm-level win-rate tables on both sides, from 3,794 recovered party names the EUIPO API never carried.
What actually kills designs— prior-art types with kill rates, and the web sources behind dead designs (Amazon is #1; it isn't close).
Who decides: rapporteurs — Board of Appeal reversal rates by named decision-lead, from 2% to 54%.
Where applicants come from — China leads first-instance invalidity filings, quantified.
Top legal grounds— Article 25(1)(a)–(g) CDR breakdown, with Cornwell's 2011-2020 comparison.
Board of Appeal annulment rate— our 25.4% computation vs EUIPO's own published 18.1% with reconciliation.
Methodology + caveats — the LLM extraction layer and its validation, the EUIPO outcome-field gap, ex parte vs inter partes BoA, what the 1.2% uncovered residue is.