Design Registration

Registered designs protect the visual appearance of the whole or part of a product, including its shape, decoration, colours or contours.

To obtain a valid registration, the design has to be “novel” and have “individual character” (i.e. it has to be new/not already been disclosed to the public, and creates a different overall impression from other earlier designs.

A registration for a design grants you, prima facie, the ability to prevent another party from trading using the same or a very similar design. Once registered, you can mark your product as being protected via a registered design (which can act as a deterrent to potential infringers).

A design registration can help you commercially exploit your product design to its fullest potential – you can licence use of your design to third parties, or even sell your design. If you don’t register your design, it is possible someone else could look to register your design, or something very similar, and then try to prevent you from registering or even using your design in the future.

 A registered design lasts longer than unregistered design rights (assuming you pay the renewal fees on time for the full life of the design). Unregistered designs also provide a much narrower scope of protection in comparison 'as you have to show there has been copying' of an unregistered design by an infringer (i.e. that they new of and copied your design – this can be hard to prove).

The short answer is - maybe.

You may still be able to obtain a valid registration if you started to sell your product (or otherwise disclosed it to the public) within the previous 12 months. If you disclosed/started to sell your product longer than 12 months ago, then you will not be able to obtain a valid UK or EU design registration.

It is always recommended that you seek to register your design as soon as possible. When it comes to UK and EU designs, if you want to keep your design secret, you can defer the publication of your design application. This means that details of the design will not be made publicly available until you request that the design is published. However, this also means you cannot enforce your design until it has been published.

The process can be very quick. Typically UK and EU design applications take only 1-2 weeks from filing to registration (assuming no problems arise and you do not defer the publication of your design).

However, design applications in some other countries (e.g. the USA) can take much longer.