Currently the protection of industrial designs in the European Union undergoes the harmonization process, and two legal protection systems co-exist today: Union-wide protection of Community designs and national protection of designs. These two systems do not always operate smoothly, sometimes they cause difficult problems for the common market. The so-called spare parts problem is one of them. Some problems have been successfully removed in the past by applying the exhaustion of rights doctrine. In fact, applying the doctrine amounts to restriction of intellectual property rights. Examining current harmonization efforts in the EU, we see that the design property rights are in a constant state of adjustment. The restriction of these rights seems to solve successfully the problems of the single market as well as those of free competition – it is a universal legal instrument indeed. The restriction must be motivated, however. The consumers‘ rights must be involved to substantiate the restriction. The design property rights amount to exclusive rights for certain modes of information usage. We have applied this information approach to substantiate the restriction of design property rights when solving the spare parts problem. According to this approach, consumer should have the inalienable right for a free usage of design information to restore the original appearance of a product. The analysis of the problem shows, that exhaustion of rights doctrine should be used to solve the... [to full text]