The Latest Design Consultation - Yet Another Overhaul of Design Law

Design Museum, London

Author Anthony O'Neill  Licence CC BY-SA 2.0  Source Wikimedia Commons

 

Jane Lambert

Every so often, the government of the day has a bash at changing design law.  The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 abolished copyright as a means of protecting product designs, introduced a new intellectual property right known as unregistered design right and modified the Registered Designs Act 1949.  That statute was further modified by the Registered Design Regulations, which implemented Directive 98/71/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 October 1998 on the legal protection of designs.  Council Regulation (EC) No 6/2002 of 12 December 2001 on Community designs introduced two more IP rights known respectively as registered and unregistered Community designs.  The Intellectual Property Act 2014 brought further modifications to both registered designs and unregistered design rights.  Brexit abolished registered Community designs, but unregistered Community designs continued to exist as supplementary unregistered designs. Shortly before the UK left the European Union, the Court of Justice of the European Union held that copyright can protect product designs in certain circumstances.

The result is "a patchwork of overlapping rights, which is complex and difficult for designers to understand, especially if they do not have legal representation" (para 2 of Section F of an open consultation on changes to the UK designs framework, 4 Sept 2025).  The reason for the consultation is that the HM government is contemplating yet another overhaul of design law.  There are several reasons why it is doing so.  There is evidence that designs have been registered that are not entitled to protection under the Registered Designs Act 1949, either because the designs lack novelty or individual character, or they do not belong to the registrant.   Technology has advanced raising questions of registrability of animations, graphical user interfaces and computer-generated designs.   There is a call for simplification of design law, reconsideration of criminal penalties for registered design infringement and possible extension to unregistered design right infringement and the extension of small claims track jurisdiction to cover registered design disputes. 

There is a special consultation website with an introductory YouTube video.  The consultation document is divided into 9 sections with explanatory videos for each topic.  Responses should be filed no later than 27 Nov 2025.   Anyone wishing to discuss this article can call me on 020 7404 5252 during normal office hours or send me a message through my contact page at any time.