[Designs] IP High Court, Reiwa 6 (Gyo-Ke) No. 10019 — Beverage in a container (Judge Nakahira)
更新日：4 日前
Article information
Type: Case note
Category: Designs
Topics: Dynamic designs
First published on this site: 2026-10-09
Case / source information: IP High Court, Reiwa 6 (Gyo-Ke) No. 10019
Display and classification checked: 2026-10-09
[Designs] IP High Court, Reiwa 6 (Gyo-Ke) No. 10019 — Beverage in a container (Judge Nakahira)
*The design was excluded from protection as a dynamic design because its manner of change lacked a certain regularity and its changing shape was not steady.
(Excerpt from the judgment, translated)
A dynamic design concerns an applied-for design whose constituent shape or other features change while it remains a “design” under Design Act Article 2(1). It treats the entire process, including the states before and after the change, as one dynamic shape or configuration and protects it as a single design. It therefore requires a definite form and other characteristics enabling the whole, including intermediate shapes throughout the change, to be understood as the shape or configuration of one article.
Specifically,…in every state before, during and after the change, the shape must satisfy the requirements for an article under the Design Act: as an attribute of the article, a certain shape must exist for a certain period; it must have a definite form whose boundaries can be identified as the basis for recognizing the shape; and its manner of change must have a certain regularity or its changing shape must be steady.
In the application at issue,…plan views 1–3 after opening the lid show changes in the foam. The width of the band of bubbles around the can’s edge is not uniform, and its outline is an irregular circle. During the process, the bubble band becomes wider in some places but disappears or narrows in others. After the white central area disappears and small clusters of white bubbles become irregularly scattered, the diameter of the annular shape gradually decreases. However, the rate at which the outline contracts varies by location. The shape becomes irregular rather than circular before reaching a two-tier truncated-cone shape. This formation and disappearance of bubbles cannot be regarded as having a certain shape for a certain period with identifiable boundaries, as required for a design or dynamic design. Nor can the manner of change be regarded as having a certain regularity or the changing shape as being steady.
Original article (2025-09-25):
Originally posted on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7513752706507980800/
2026-10-09: Added a topic tag based on the article text and updated the topic display in Article information.
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2026-10-09: First published on this site from the LinkedIn original, with classification, article information, and consultation navigation.
2026-10-13: aligned canonical, hreflang, and search-index URLs with the published URLs. The original article text was not changed.
