Design Rights
Protecting Designs
This area of intellectual property protection is concerned with protecting the outward appearance of products. it protects lines, contours, colours, shapes, textures and ornamentation that come together to give products a unique shape. If your business relies on the visual appearance of products, designs rights should be important to your business. Design protection comes into its own when the product design and aesthetics are primary characteristics of product differentiation.
Often other types of intellectual property rights assist to enhance the protections granted by designs, such as patent rights and copyright.
Designs may be made to play a central role in an integrated IP protection strategy, adding a layer of protection that would not otherwise exist, and providing an additional means of protection that falls outside the scope of the other forms of intellectual property protection.
Unregistered Design Rights
There are two types of design protection. Firstly the unregistered ´design right´ applies automatically in the same way as copyright law; secondly, a registered design, requires a formal application to the Patents Office and grants more extensive protection.
Registered Designs
Manufactured products are often the result of significant market research and investment in the development process. Products resulting from these processes often warrant protection as registered designs. Registered designs are arguably the most cost effective means of registered intellectual property protection.
Registered Designs protection applies to all manner of industrially manufactured products which have some physical characteristic that is visually distinctive and new, whether it was designed for domestic or industrial use. It protects the shape, configuration, surface decoration and patterns from coping, and as such may be made to play an important part in ensuring future returns on investments are realised, by having an effective legal right against predatory copyists.
Designs Solicitors - Intellectual Property Services
As an intellectual property law firm, our designs solicitors provide legal advice on registered and unregistered designs in the UK and Europe, and combining design protection with other firms of intellectual property protection from our London Offices. Our services range from filing and prosecuting design applications through to assignments, licensing, searching and watching, infringement and validity advice, portfolio management, renewals, due diligence in respect to identifying and enforcing relevant rights, litigation support and commercialisation advice.
Our solicitors advise on registered design rights and unregistered designs and how these rights may be used to square off a corner of the market in product design. We have also provided detailed and complex advice on designing around infringement, so reduce or avoid unlawful encroachments on competitors' products.
Our Experience
We have advised companies on designs rights in respect to:
- prevent liquidators selling manufactured articles;
- importation of mass-market goods into the UK and Europe;
- car parts in the automotive industry;
- technical and industrial products imported globally;
- the reduction of registered design rights over time and alternatives to mitigate against expiration of rights;
- designs law overlap with copyright protection;
- design rights vesting in handmade goods and handicrafts;
- rights co-existing with design rights to expand areas of legal protection, where competitors would be ill-advised to go;
- internationalising design protection in respect to ground-breaking forms of electronic advertising.
Call our design solicitors for assistance to protect designs that can be registered to enhance your intellectual property protection.
London Business Solicitors & Lawyers
Our Solicitors in London assist businesses in the UK and internationally to create options, achieve realistic and attainable goals, and providing guidance to assist decision-making in a commercial context.
For more information, legal advice or to find out more about the legal services we provide, call 020 7353 1770 or contact us online.