Most legal orders establish several forms of design protection that are not mutually exclusive. At the same time, the intersection of legal regimes gives rise to a number of practical and doctrinal problems related to the determination of the scope of the author’s and rightholder’s rights, the unfair behavior of participants in civil transactions, and the erosion of the institutional purpose of intellectual property objects. The main task of the study is to draw a meaningful border between the two forms of protection of industrial design objects. The paper elucidates the basic concepts of understanding an industrial design, the functions and features of the activity under consideration, the relationship with the category of "art," examines the formation and development of legal thought about the relationship between copyright and patent forms of protection of the results of artistic design. It is concluded that it is necessary to make proposals and recommendations to eliminate unfair practices in the exercise of the right to protect the results of creative activity under consideration.