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%)

69.3%

first-instance invalidation rate (merits-only)

56.5%

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.

Why publish this?

DesignVerdict is a SaaS analytics product for EU design IP specialists. The annual report is free because we want practitioners to see the data quality and form their own view before paying for the live dashboard, sector-specific exports, or email digests of new matching decisions.

Compiled by Arsen Khurliyev (Futurist IP). Questions, requests for tailored data cuts, or errata: arsen.k@futuristip.com.