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While it seems to be a way of British life to deride the EU and the negative impact it has had on our lives, we cannot overlook the force for good one of its agencies has been in protecting design ideas and work. Stephen Hitchins reports

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What has the European Union ever done for you? For that matter, what has the EU ever done for design? And while we are asking questions you might consider where would it have been most sensible to spend your travel budget in April?

Whatever your point of view as to the overall value of the EU to this country, and wherever you may stand on the question of a possible referendum on the question of the UK's membership of it, there is one area that has a direct impact on the business of design. And it behoves all of us to be aware of it, to fully understand it, and to take advantage of it.

It comes in the shape of an EU institution somewhat misleadingly called the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (OHIM). In reality it is the organisation responsible for the registration of the Community Trade Mark (CTM) and the Community Design (RCD), giving them legal protection throughout all 28 countries.

The OHIM's 5th European Trade Marks & Design Judges symposium, Alicante

The office works in partnership with the intellectual property offices of the EU member states, with international organisations like the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) based in Geneva, and with the European Commission on a wide range of issues that impact the owners and users of intellectual property rights.

And it does this online, at fees considerably less than those charged by each individual country, and gives greater protection over a wider geographic area: across 500 million people to be precise.

Why is this such a well-kept secret? Especially when you discover that it was established in 1994, has been operational for trademark registration since 1996, and 2003 for designs. While it registers, manages, and shares with the European Court of Justice legal responsibility for its decisions, it also has a remit to promote registration, something that it has been highly successful in doing with corporations, manufacturers and the legal profession, but less so with the creatives producing the work that needs protection in the first place. As an agency of the EU it has legal, administrative, and financial independence, is responsible for its own budget from revenues derived from the fees it charges for registration. And those fees have dropped significantly over the past 10 years.

One of the highlights of last year's Milan furniture fair was the contribution made by students of ECAL (Ecole Cantonale d'art de Lausanne), pictured here with Philippe Starck

There are so many small organisations out there promoting their own version of protection for designs and crafts via various means that if you are considering what to do it is easy to be misled into thinking such schemes are worthwhile, whereas in reality they have limited value. OHIM is the real deal and is worth investigating if you wish to give your designs legal protection. With plagiarising and copycat work increasing at an exponential rate, it is something that cannot be ignored.

More than 700,000 designs have been registered since the first registrations were made on 1 April 2003. Its inception was not an April Fool's Day prank. The joke, if there was one, was on the design community that even now does not fully appreciate its value.

To mark its tenth anniversary an international design conference was held in Alicante, bringing together experts, not only in the field of design, but also from the legal world, major entrepreneurs from industry, and academics. This was no small event: 75 intellectual property experts were on hand from the OHIM, top-level judges, government ministers, officials from the European Commission, and from 17 of the national IP offices within the EU, 55 speakers from around the world including Javier Mariscal, all there for 660 delegates - it was quite something.

ECAL students contributed work to the 2013 Salone, including l-r Noose, by Anais Benoit Dignac

Coinciding with the Salone del Mobile, the conference in Alicante was not as brash, nor as frenzied as a week in Milan can be. Neither was it as overpriced as the other conference on the international agenda, design management in Madrid. Yet the designers who flocked to the Bar Basso in Via Plinio in Milan or to the DMI bar on Calle de Hortaleza missed out on something practical that should concern them all.

Italy's political instability and economic woes have had their impact on the design world, Stefano Boeri having been dismissed as Milan's councillor for design, fashion and culture. Spanish cutbacks have included the sad demise of DDI, the state agency for the development and promotion of design and innovation. There were 2,500 exhibitors in Milan spread across 150,000 sq m of exhibition space, though the experimental work on show at the Ventura Lambrate was a shadow of its former self since the price of exhibiting has been raised above what many young designers can afford.

ECAL students contributed work to the 2013 Salone, including Sit, by Tobias Nitsche

The overall numbers attending such events have fallen; from nearly 400,000 going to Milan in 2008 down to 100,000 this year (with most of them only staying for a couple of days), and just 200 or so participants in Madrid splashed out the €1,250 fee to attend - to listen to design managers talking to themselves. There were some interesting things on display in Milan, was it ever thus; including work by Hella Jongerius, (whose firm Jongeriuslab is behind the new KLM business-class cabins), Jean Nouvel's 'Office for Living', Kartell's collaboration with Philippe Starck, and most interesting of all, work by students of the Ecole Cantonale d'art de Lausanne (ECAL). Just as Jongerius was a graduate of one of Europe's coolest design schools, the Design Academy in Eindhoven, so for the past few years it has been ECAL students that draw all the attention, with them injecting new ideas into some old manufacturers.

The sale of European products is increasing only in the Americas and Asia, where it is threatened by low-cost competition. Opportunities for design work show particularly strong growth in Asia Pacific, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East because the biggest driver of total shareholder return is like-for-like sales growth, which means going to the fast-growth markets: almost anywhere basically, except the UK.

ECAL students contributed work to the 2013 Salone, including Bricks, by Aurelie Mathieu

All that competition both for products and design has to come with a health warning: Watch out for copies and knock-offs. The concern of those developing the ideas - be it with new materials, new technologies, new environmental concerns and manufacturing techniques - are being impacted by the demands of new markets, new media, new buying habits both of individuals and corporations following the financial Pearl Harbor of 2008, and still more new ways of working. They all need to protect their ideas. As we continue to navigate our way through what is fast becoming a lost decade, nothing is more important.

Thus as multinationals build their businesses where populations are growing not declining, and where GNP is rising not stagnant, (at best) design expenditure will be concentrated in geographical areas of the world that are all centres for fraud, counterfeiting and the stealing of design ideas.

With the great recession followed by the not-so-great recovery, Europe is lagging in a three-speed world. It should not have come as a surprise that the streets of Milan looked depressingly shabby, and much as the furniture industry tries hard to put a brave face on things, its nerves are wearing thin after years of economic crises. The ease with which one would get a taxi, even in the rain, was evidence enough of the decline.

Designing by Making, by ECAL MA student Levi Dethier

The prosecco flowed, but the festivities were straining for fun, innovation frequently amounting to little more than a reprise of greatest hits, new pieces were smaller; I always want it to be more high society than high street, but this year it was more folie de grandeur than anything.

As the future growth of the economy depends increasingly on its strengths in creativity, innovation and ideas, areas in which Europe and North America have pre-eminent records of achievement, ways have to be found that maximise the potential of all these design skills to maintain international competitiveness and expand their position as world leaders. It will also mean ensuring that creative hotshots learn to protect what they do for a living. As they leave the hoopla of Milan for another year they should reflect on that as they wrestle with digital production technologies and environmental initiatives.

Morale in Milan may have been low, but as anaemic as their response to the recession often is, exhibitors at pains to demonstrate the vitality of the industry despite of the general malaise, visionary industrialists still on the lookout for talent, even half-baked ideas should be registered.

Mockup x 36, a book of students work published by ECAL

At the conference in Alicante, Edit Herczog from the European Parliament pointed out it was rare for the EU to celebrate the results of its legislation. In the case of the OHIM that would come as a surprise to those behind the initiative in the early Nineties because no one had any idea of the scale of the operation they had instituted. She also noted that while Europe is great at knowledge creation it is not so good at knowledge management, nor does it really communicate the added value of design because the economic value of design is still in question.

While many might argue with that last point they would have to admit that for all the combined efforts of design promotional bodies within the EU the metrics are not in place to really answer the question. The overall statistics are too thin, the surveys not sufficiently comprehensive, and however you choose to consider it the data is not robust.

If you have a 10th anniversary party the questions must be asked, what is there to celebrate, and what could to be done to improve matters in future? There is little doubt as to what should be celebrated. Where it was once considered that the legal registration of designs to enable protection across an entire continent would take too long, cost too much, and that the take up would be too slight to make legislating worth the effort, the figures speak for themselves: 10 years later more than 700,000 designs have been registered by organisations or individuals from more than 200 countries. A system is in place and has been proved to work in what was previously one of the most unharmonised areas of law in Europe.

Gala Table, by Sebastien Cluzel and Yesim Eroktem

Filing a design registration across all the member countries is now simple, inexpensive, and swift. It can be completed in one language, one application covering single or multiple related designs (up to a maximum of 99), with one payment (fees are considerably reduced for multiple applications), online, and with automatic extension to cover new members of the EU. Publication may be deferred for up to 30 months for commercial reasons if required. There is even a second system, known as Unregistered Community Designs, which exists for a shorter period (initially three years), has less security, but is particularly useful in the fight against copying and piracy.

Piracy, of items such as shoes, medicines, and toys, are generally stopped by customs authorities at the frontiers, on grounds of counterfeiting, safety or social protection, but copying goes much further than that, far beyond fake DVDs, watches and handbags. 'We can copy everything except your mother' goes a saying in Shanghai. Soy sauce with fizzy water passed off as Pepsi, fake Cisco network routers known as Chiscos and mobile phones that look like Nokia's latest can all be easily found. So too can fake blood plasma. The need to run 'I'd rather go naked than wear fake Chanel' ads does not really come close to that, whatever we might think of 'Lagerfeld's Labours Lost' to counterfeit products.

Isabel Roig, director of the Barcelona Design Centre, presented to the Alicante conference a now notorious case of copying. Urban design can be one of the less glamorous areas of design work, but it currently involves one of the biggest cases of public counterfeiting in the history of design. It involves Santa & Cole, the architect Beth Galí, the Latina street lighting system originally produced for the city of Rotterdam, and the installation of public lighting in Doha. It was when the Doha installation proved faulty that the Qatari authorities approached the Barcelona industrial design firm about its design, only to discover that the product on Al Waab Street was not an original nor manufactured to the original specification.

The case has attracted much attention and is a reminder of how valuable the press can be in the fight against copying. Such cases make us aware that registration has allowed design to stop being the poor relative of trademarks and patents. As is now the case with BCD, so the Polish Patent Office also promotes the value of design to business alongside programmes to raise awareness of IP protection as part of its financial argument to stimulate innovation and creativity. Sadly this is not a universal approach.

Santa & Cole Latina lighting system, produced for Rotterham Photo credit: Santa & Cole

The RCD is a child that has grown up very fast. On the first day 10 years ago there were 138 applications, with the first filings made by Casio and Daimler Chrysler demonstrating that major corporations endorsed the system from the beginning. From application to registration took from three to six months. The first electronic filings were made on 1 June 2003, and just two per cent of applications that year were made online. By last year 81 per cent of filings were made electronically, and on one day 2,659 registrations were made. It has become inexpensive, fast, and uncomplicated, with more than 40 per cent of designs registered within a week of an application being made and 97 per cent within 10 days. Fasttrack registrations can be made within two days. Hardly a country in the world does not file Community Designs, even Iran has 10 registrations. In 2012 87,473 designs were registered, with Germany way out ahead of other countries making applications: 169,690 compared to Italy's 97,168, France's 60,234, and the USA's 57,509. The UK registered 46,720 designs.

The USA's equivalent of the RCD is the design patent, as yet a rather pale imitation and sad addition to the arsenal of legal registration, and something that can take up to two years to obtain. The Apple iPad is registered in the EU with 26 designers credited, including one Steve Jobs. It has become the most celebrated IP case in the USA and it is over a design right.

Tests for infringements are very different in the USA compared to Europe, but in a debate in Alicante about the design of mobile devices it became clear how talking design in law can be very different to talking design. (For example, there was an instructive discussion as to the meaning of dotted lines on a design presentation and how they are viewed within different jurisdictions.)

Santa & Cole Latina lighting system in Barcelona. When the latter proved faulty it was discovered that it not to the original specifications Photo credit: Santa & Cole

The case before the courts has not been about the Apple and Samsung products but about the registered design of those products, and when you look at the drawings of what was registered the differences are clear. Nevertheless this is a story that will run and run and run.

Of all the categories of designs registered, furniture has consistently attracted the largest number of applications. Designers are frequently encouraged (deny it if you like) by both furniture manufacturers and clients for interior design to copy, and asked to produce something 'exactly like that' for a fraction of the cost. Designers are themselves guilty of infringing rights when they deliver an item they call a 'hommage' to someone else's work.

Copycat furniture, pirate designs, rip-offs: whatever you call them their continued presence continues to frustrate and anger other furniture manufacturers and result in huge financial losses. By some estimates, more than £9bn was lost to the furniture industry through copying in the UK alone last year. Inadequate laws are seen by many as a licence to copy - copiers needing only a good lawyer and a fat legal budget to defeat the true brand. It happens.

Santa & Cole Latina lighting system, installation made in Doha. When the latter proved faulty it was discovered that it not to the original specifications

The OHIM is now not only a major EU agency but one of the world's leading IP offices. Its success can perhaps be measured by an example. Gerhard Bauer, for more than 25 years chief trademark counsel of Daimler and past president of the International Trademark Association, has championed the RCD since demonstrating an infringement before the German Federal Supreme Court, which subsequently confirmed the validity of the claimant's Registered Community Design, confirmed the infringement of the defendant's products, and confirmed the claim for damages, and so on. From the first day, he saw it as an essential part of his legal defence system.

One company that really understands this is Proctor & Gamble. The world's largest consumer brands manufacturer employs 300 in-house designers and 65 external creative agencies, with design integrated into its entire cycle of product development. Just as important as design is its complete parallel coordination with design protection and marketing programmes, design, patent and trademark attorneys working alongside designers throughout all their research and development. This ensures the fullest possible protection of its shapes, containers, packaging, colour combinations, product configurations, ornamentation, packaging design, and in-store merchandising that are all considered as a part of the brand equity needing protection.

Making a judgement on when to disclose and when to go to market with a new idea is challenging. What is desirable commercially can be inadvisable legally. Early marketing can undermine legal protection. A simple analogy for a designer is the free pitch, something designers and their professional associations abhor, but which they have come to live with. In this situation designers have to show sufficient information to establish the spirit and the quality of their proposed work, together with their ability to achieve the required endproduct, without making potentially compromising disclosures that a creative pitch can involve. Designers have had to learn to strike a balance, and not simply to complain about this.

Visual of the 37,000 sq m extension to the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (OHIM) building, the home of a major EU agency and one of the world's leading IP offices, now under construction and due for completion by the end of the year

IP is no different. The free pitch is just symbolic of how the world of the designer is changing fast. Their industry is changing. Their competitors are changing. Their customers are changing. And they have to find ways to increase the value to their clients of what they do. When Finnair ordered new seating for its Airbus 320s, the client was not interested in the design arguments about the seat's styling or fabrics. It was interested in the €1m savings in aviation fuel that the design delivered and the higher potential load factor without any loss of leg room. The argument to win the design project was the €1m.

The premium on creativity in this century should give us a flying start in the race for a competitive edge, but only if we protect it. It is controversial because some persist in seeing IP as a fiction created by law, the granting of a property right on ideas. Designers can dismiss IP rights as irrelevant, but they do it at their peril. It means that there is no one to help them if their IPRs are stolen, infringed or exploited.

As with most conferences, the sun was outside, but the stars were inside illuminating any vestigial gloom. Predictably Mariscal was the coup de theatre. In the graveyard slot just after lunch one day, his presentation was electrifying. Moving seamlessly between four languages and a concoction of thespian grunts and whistles, he danced with cardboard cut-outs, waved clouds on sticks, fell off a step-ladder, and generally charmed, dumfounded, and captivated.

The audience sat nonplussed and astounded throughout a 45-minute theatrical tour de force backed by a continuous piece of filmed animation peopled by mariscalian figures with musical accompaniment. It was his party piece, refined over several years, an early version of which can be seen on YouTube. As they say, 'you had to be there' - and visitors to Milan and Madrid should have been. It was fun, instructive and worthwhile.