Follow your case

You can follow your case and find publicly available documents concerning your application in our Search Service. Search by using your application or registration number.
Track your case in our Search Service

Payment for the application

You pay the application fee at the same time as you file your application using our Application Guide. To use the Application Guide you need a Norwegian national ID number. Customers without this ID number must use dedicated forms. More information about this.

You can expect an answer to your application within 3 months of the filing date.

Correspondence concerning an application or registration

If you are sending us a letter connected to an existing application or registration, we recommend that you use the form for correspondence in Altinn. You will receive acknowledgement immediately.
Altinn: Correspondence with the Norwegian Industrial Property Office (this form is in Norwegian)

If you are unable to use Altinn for any reason, you can send an e-mail to post@patentstyret.no.

Processing the application

What we examine:

The Design Act sets out a number of condtions that must be met to enable us to register a design. We examine whether these conditions are met before we register the design:

• the application fulfils the formal requirements, such as specifying who is the applicant and who is the designer, and attaching clear pictures of the design
• the application applies to a product for which you can register a design, and not, for example, a concept or an idea
• the design does not contain a national flag or infringe public order and morals.

We can not register a design if:

• it does not show the appearance of a product or part of a product
• it contravenes public order and morals
• it contains an official coat of arms, national flag or similar without permission

What we do not examine:

The Design Act also sets out a number of conditions that must be met for a design registration to be valid, but that do not prevent us being able to register the design. We do not examine whether the following conditions are met before we register the design:

• the design is new, that is to say that it has not been shown in public, for more than 12 months before you filed the application, or before the priority date
• the design has an individual character, that is to say that there no other designs in our register or in the market that have the same overall impression
• the design does not infringe the rights of others to a trademark, photographs, copyright or public control marks
• the design is visible to the user in normal use
• the design does not solely fulfil a technical function.

The processing of design applications is a fast, efficient and reasonable process. If we were to examine whether all designs are new, have individual character and fulfil all the conditions for valid registration, it would make the process longer and more expensive. Nor do we have sufficient technical information about the design to assess whether it is visible to the user or whether it merely fulfils a technical function.

The Design Act therefore establishes that you should assess for yourself whether these conditions are met when you file an application. To assist you in this, you can, for example, order a "supplementary examination". See below.

After a design has been registered, others can contest the registration if they believe that it is not valid. They can do so by sending what is known as a "request for administrative review" to the Norwegian Industrial Property Office, or by taking the case to court.

Supplementary examination

If you order a supplementary examination, we will search our design register to see if there are any previous designs with a similar appearance that may block a valid registration of your design. If we find anything relevant, we will send you a listing of this, and you can assess yourself whether you wish to withdraw your application or not.

Designs not registered at NIPO: If there are older designs on the market that give the same overall impression as your design, these may prevent you from obtaining a valid registration, even if the older designs do not have design registration. Designs of this kind will not be found in a supplementary examination.

Errors or deficiencies in the application

If we discover errors or deficiencies in the application, you will be informed how you can correct them. The processing time depends on how quickly you reply to our letters. We give you a time limit of two months in which to reply. We will generally contact you by phone to clarify any simple questions.

Deadlines for payments and replying to letters

The time limits we set are final. This means that payment of invoices and written replies to letters must have reached us by the day on which the time limit expires.

If you fail to pay or reply, or do so too late, we will shelve the application. This means that we stop processing the application.

If your application is shelved for the first time, you will be informed how processing of the application can be resumed. You will be given a new deadline by which to rectify what it was that resulted in the application being shelved, that is to say either pay the invoice or reply to our earlier letter. When you have done this, you will receive an invoice for a resumption fee. You must pay this invoice by the payment deadline before we resume processing the application.

It is only possible to resume processing an application once. If your application is shelved a second time, this will automatically lead to it being finally shelved.

If you fail to reply or pay within the resumption deadline we set for you, this will lead to the application being finally shelved.

We cannot resume processing an application that has been finally shelved.

If you have problems in replying before the deadline, you can ask for an extension.

Registration

If there are no deficiencies or errors in the application, we will register it as soon as we have started processing it. If you have asked us to keep the application secret for a period, we will wait until it has become publicly available before registering it. It takes a total of 2-3 months for us to complete processing of the application.

Publicly available design
A design application will be automatically kept secret for up to six months, unless the applicant asks for the application to be publicly available at the time of filing.

• Search Service

• Norwegian Official Designs Gazette (Norsk Designtidende)

Questions?

Contact our Customer Service Centre, telefon + 47 22 38 73 00