Design Rights
Design rights are one of the less well-known intellectual property rights, but plenty of businesses have them without realising. In the UK there are three types: registered designs, unregistered designs, and artistic copyright.
Unregistered designs and copyright arise automatically and give you some ability to exploit and defend your design, but the protection has real limits. Registering your design with the UK Intellectual Property Office gives you the strongest protection available.
Before applying, we’ll help you work through a few key questions: is your design new and unique, does it meet the technical requirements, does it have individual character that sets it apart from what’s already out there, and is its appearance determined by more than just its technical function? A design that’s wholly dictated by how it works won’t qualify.
We can carry out pre-application searches to check for conflicts with existing registrations or unregistered designs that might affect your application. If your design is new and likely to succeed, we’ll prepare and file the application with the Intellectual Property Office, along with the representations needed to support it.
Registering your design is the strongest protection available, and often the most overlooked.
We work with businesses at every stage: one registering a new design, or one checking whether an existing one might conflict with theirs. Wherever you sit on that scale, here’s where our intellectual property work applies.
If you’re not sure which of these fits your situation, call us, and we’ll point you in the right direction.
