Registered Designs intro

4 April 2010

Registered Designs are often rather unfairly treated as the poor cousin of Patents. Whilst patents protect inventions designs protect, for want of a better answer, designs.

Registered designs therefore can be very effective as they protect the ( simply) how the product looks.

The registered design system is split in two common to the increasingly, and unsatisfactorily, bipolar nature of the legal system in the UK - UK registered designs cover the UK and Community Registered Designs cover Europe.

UK Registered Designs are filed at the United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office (UK IPO) in Newport, South Wales.

CDR are applied for at the Office of Harmonisation of Internal Markets (OHIM) in Alicante, Spain.

Registered designs in the UK cover design including ornamentation and give a monopoly on that design. Your design must be new, so not identical to an existing design, and have individual character. We provide a registration service.

UK registered designs are renewable in 5 year periods for up to 25 years. All products are capable of being a registered design provided they have a distinctive look and perhaps key features.

Tim Mount is a trainee solicitor, contactable at tim.mount@lawdit.co.uk