A design shall be considered new if no identical design has been made available to the public before the date of the filing of the application for registration or, if priority is claimed, before the date of priority. Designs shall be deemed to be identical despite existing differences if their features differ only in immaterial details.

A design shall be considered to have an individual character if the overall impression it produces on the informed user differs from the overall impression produced by any other design which has been made available to the public before the date indicated in the second paragraph. In assessing whether the design has an individual character, the degree of freedom of the designer in developing the design shall be taken into consideration.