In competitive markets, the shape or appearance of a product can be as valuable as its function. When copied, this can damage your brand, dilute your market position, and cost your business significant revenue. The visual appearance of a product can be protected by a range of intellectual property rights, including registered designs, unregistered design rights, and, in some cases, copyright. Understanding which rights apply can help safeguard the important aesthetic features of your products.
We specialise in advising on both registered and unregistered designs under UK design law, helping clients protect their creations, challenge infringing products, and defend against allegations of infringement.
We help our clients navigate this complex area of intellectual property, including assessing whether a product meets the legal requirements for protection, whether obtaining protection aligns with commercial objectives, and whether existing rights are being infringed. Our expertise extends from advising individuals and start-ups at the early stages of product development to creating multi-product, multi-jurisdictional filing strategies for established businesses. We also support clients with managing design portfolios, combining different IP rights where appropriate, and guiding them through disputes before the courts or IP offices. Our team regularly files and prosecutes UK, European Community, and International design applications, and we work with a global network of specialists to secure protection worldwide.
Design protection can be obtained for a wide range of products, including consumer goods, packaging, tools, electronic devices, appliances, and vehicles. It also covers non-3D elements such as graphical user interfaces, icons, logos, surface decoration, and other forms of graphic design.
We have a proven track record in handling both complex registered design disputes and cases involving unregistered rights. Our team combines deep knowledge of UK and international design law with commercial awareness to help protect your market position. From filing your first design application to defending your rights in court or resolving a dispute through negotiation, we act as a trusted partner for businesses across industries.
Registered designs
A registered design protects the shape or appearance of a product. It gives its owner the exclusive right to the design of that product and it can be used to deter others from copying it, or stop them from continuing to do so, without consent. A registered design offers designers an affordable and realistic means of obtaining protection against copying.
Unregistered designs
Unregistered design rights arise automatically and can be effective for products with short commercial lifecycles, such as seasonal fashion items. However, owners must prove both ownership and copying, which makes these rights more complex to enforce than registered designs.
Design infringements
Design rights protect the visual appearance of a product, covering the lines, contours, shape, configuration, pattern, and ornamentation that create its distinctive look. Infringement can arise when another party makes, sells, imports, or exports a product that is identical or sufficiently similar to create the same overall impression on an informed user.
For registered designs, the legal test focuses on the overall impression. For unregistered rights, evidence of copying is required. Both full and partial copying can amount to infringement if the features taken are a significant part of the design.
We are frequently instructed on matters involving both registered and unregistered design right infringement. Our role includes analysing relevant features, comparing them with protected designs, and advising on the strength of an infringement claim or defence.
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(PATMA: Patent Attorneys) Tier 1 – 2021 FAQs
Generally, any product having a distinctive appearance. If the look of your product is likely to make a person want to purchase it rather than another product that looks different but performs an identical function, then you may wish to consider filing a registered design to protect the appearance of your product.
A patent protects the way something actually works rather than its appearance. Therefore, the protection afforded by a patent is broader than that provided by a registered design. However, patents are much harder and more expensive to obtain as the patent office examines the invention for novelty and inventive step. In any event, a patent is not appropriate where protection is required only for the shape or the appearance of an article.
You own a monopoly in your design. Your registered design gives you the right to take legal action to prevent other people exploiting a product identical or similar to that registered, without your consent.
You do not need to prove copying. You can use your registered design to prevent another person from producing a product that looks identical or similar to your own even if they have never even seen your product before.
You can indicate on the product and related literature or packaging the fact that a registered design has been obtained and the registered design number. This official notification acts as a worthwhile deterrent against potential copiers and demonstrates to others an intention to enforce your intellectual property rights.
Drawings or photographs of the design have to be filed at the UK Designs Registry, part of the UK Intellectual Property Office, a government body. Once registered, an official Certificate of Registration is issued.
Copyright protection is not available for the majority of designs as it is excluded by law. Unregistered design right can subsist automatically on creation of a design. However, there are qualification criteria which must be met for the design right to subsist, and to enforce the right successfully it is necessary to prove that someone has copied your design and this can be difficult. Also, the period of protection is much shorter than that available for registered designs.
A registered design application should be filed before the design has been made available to the public anywhere in the world.
However, in the UK and Europe and some other counties, any disclosure by the designer during a 12-month grace period preceding the filing of an application is not considered to make the design available to the public and so an application may still be filed if the design has been disclosed and the grace period has not expired.
However, it should be noted that the grace period only applies to disclosures made by the designer. If a third party discloses the same or similar design, which they have created independently, prior to the designer’s application date, then this disclosure could invalidate any design protection even if it is made during the grace period.
Therefore, our advice is to file an application as soon as possible and, preferably, before disclosing the design to the public.
A system for the international registration of designs exists under the Hague Agreement. This enables a national of one of the states party to the Agreement to obtain protection for their designs in any of the contracting states by means of a single application. The European Union became a signatory to the Hague Agreement in January 2008 and the UK became a signatory in June 2018, enabling members of the EU and the UK to use the system to obtain registered design protection in many countries outside the EU or UK by filing a single application at the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO).
Registration can be as quick as only a few days. A registered design lasts for an initial period of five years. A renewal fee is then payable every five years up to a maximum of 25 years in total.
A UK registered design affords its owner protection in the UK only. Corresponding protection can be obtained in other countries but applications in those countries must be filed within six months of the filing date of your UK application.
A registered Community Design enables a designer to obtain a single registered design covering the whole of the European Community based on a single application.
