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The Intellectual property Act 2014 with the major reforms in the Design and Patent law which has received the Royal Assent on 14th May 2014, will be in effect from 1st October 2014. The changes are made to modernize the intellectual property (IP) laws in order to help the UK businesses better protect their IP rights. This Act also implements reforms to the designs legislation which flow from the Hargreaves review of Intellectual Property and Growth in 2011. This article gives you the information’s about the changes made in the UK IPR Act which is in practice at present.

Changes to Design Law:

The existing design law is often considered convoluted and chaotic and small businesses, who don’t have the time or resources find very difficult to extricate it and it is expected to be unsuccessful in retaining their possession of Intellectual property rights. The IP Act 2014 introduces a number of new measures and make some changes to the law in order to make design law simpler, obvious and more robust to support the small business communities.

Unregistered Design Right:

In UK, the unregistered Design right renders you with the rights to prevent others to copy your design by infringing your rights. It protects the whole or part of an article, but does not give you the protection for 2D aspects such as surface decoration. The right arises automatically and last for either 10 years from the first marketing of an article made to that design or 15 years after the creation of the design whichever is earlier. This right doesn’t need to apply for registration.

Changes Made to Unregistered Design Rights

The designer will be considered as the first owner of the design

In earlier versions, the commissioner was deemed the owner. As per the New IPR Act 2014.

As an employer you continue to own the rights to any design your employees produce in the course of their job unless their employment contract says otherwise.
As a self-employed designer or independent designer, you will now own the design you create unless there is a contract in place which says otherwise.
As a commissioner of designs you will now no longer own the design unless there is a contract in place with the designer which says otherwise.
The unregistered design definition has been altered.
As per IPR Act 2014, now the term Design is defined as the Design of the shape or configuration of the whole or part of an article.
The definition used to incorporate any aspect of the shape or configuration. Now this has been removed making it less likely an action would be brought against you if your design appears to have copied a trivial part of someone elses design or a part of a part. However, it remains an infringement to copy part of an unregistered design.
The definition of design has been clarified.
As per IPR Act 2014, to claim the design to be original, the design must not be common place in a Qualifying Country.
In UK, If you want to claim unregistered design rights in a design, that design must not be common place in the specific geographical regions of the UK, EU and some additional countries with reciprocal arrangements.
The definition of a qualifying person has been amended to those who are economically active in the EU and other qualifying countries
To qualify for UK design right protection, as the designer or the employer of a designer you must be
Be resident in the UK, or one of the other qualifying countries, as a matter of course, or
Your company must have been formed in any of the qualifying countries AND do a substantial amount of business in any of the qualifying countries.
If you do not meet the above mentioned criteria’s you may still be eligible if you meet certain other requirements.
New expectations to infringement of unregistered designs has been introduced.
Certain specific activities will no longer infringe unregistered design rights. They are:
The Use for private, non-commercial, purposes
The Use for experimental purposes.
The Use for teaching purposes, provided the use is fair, you quote the source of the design and you are not compromising the ability of the owner to exploit the design.

Registered Design Right:

As the name implies, you need to apply for the registration to claim the registered design right. The registered design right helps you to protect the appearance of the whole or a part of a product resulting from the features, in particular, the lines, colours, shapes, texture or materials of the product, contours or ornamentation. The sole owner of the registration has the exclusive right to exploit that design in the UK for up to 25 Years.

Patent Articles

Major Reforms in IPR Act - UK

Changes Made to Unregistered Design Rights

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