Protecting product innovation through UK registered designs

Helen Harmel, Associate

Protecting the visual appearance of a product can be just as important as safeguarding a brand name or invention. In the UK, if your product has a distinctive shape or appearance, design registration prevents competitors from copying.

A clear understanding of registered designs is essential for anyone seeking to protect innovative products and manage their valuable intellectual property assets.

What is a registered design?

A registered design protects the appearance of the whole or part of a product resulting from the features of, in particular, the lines, contours, colours, shape or materials of the product itself or its ornamentation.

For these purposes, a “product” means any industrial or handicraft item (including parts thereof) and can include packaging, graphic symbols, get-up, typographical typefaces, surface patterns, character images.

Advantages of applying for a UK registered design

UK registered designs offer several important benefits:

• A design registration gives you a monopoly right in the design that can last up to 25 years. It gives an exclusive right to make products incorporating the design.
• In the case of infringement, there is no requirement for the owner of the design to prove that copying has occurred which is a significant advantage over relying upon unregistered design rights or copyright which both require the owner to prove copying.
• The application process is quick and relatively inexpensive.
• The fact that the owner has incurred the costs and time of registering a design demonstrates that it is something that is potentially valuable to the owner and therefore can act as a warning to third parties.

What are the registration requirements?

  1. Novelty

The design must be new.  This means that an identical (or a design that is so similar it only differs in immaterial details) must not have been made available to the public before the application is filed.  However, the designer has a 12 month grace period after disclosure of the design during which to file the application.

  2. Individual character

In addition to being new, to be registerable a design must have individual character which means that it must give a different overall impression from any other design which has been made available to the public before the application is filed.  In determining the extent to which a design has individual character, the degree of freedom that the designer has in creating the design is taken into consideration.

  3. It must not be excluded

Some designs are excluded from protection as a registered design, in particular: features of a product that are dictated solely by technical function; features that are necessary for the product to fit with another product; computer programs; designs that are contrary to public policy or accepted principles of morality; coats of arms, royal arms, national flags, official signs or hallmarks (without consent).

To discuss how registered design protection could benefit your business, please contact our Intellectual Property team on 0161 832 3434, or at [email protected].