Rihanna was SO happy with her gorgeous new sneakers and her new position as the new Creative Designer at Puma, that in December 2014, she proudly immediately posted some photos on Instagram and on her own website. Why am I writing about that? Legally, it turned out that those photos were not without repercussions.…

Design registrations with the EUIPO (the Intellectual Property Office of the European Union) must meet certain requirements in order for them to be valid: (1) they must first of all be new and (2) have individual character and, in addition, only the (3) appearance of a product or part thereof can be registered.

In this case before the EU General Court, the discussion centered on the first, the novelty requirement. "Novelty" in the sense of the European rules, means that an item you want to register as a design must not have been previously disclosed. There is a "terme de grâce" period of one year, however, to give the depositor something of a reprieve in the event of a publication, accidental or otherwise, before the date of the filing. The filing had been made by Puma in August 2016.

Unfortunately, the publications by Rihanna fell far outside that terme de grâce. The images showed all the relevant features of the design (such as the thick sole and vertical ridges, among others) and from different angles. They also involved reliable sources (and not just some obscure or untraceable website) that were published for a wide audience on Instagram and also on the website "hausofrihanna.com. Rihanna is, but was also in 2014 a world-famous pop star, so the photos were disclosed to a wide audience. The General Court ruled that the publications were novelty harm. Puma thus lost the nullity action and thus its design registration.