Potts, Kerr & Co.

Designs and Copyright

Whilst patents can protect technical aspects of new apparatus, products, and machines, for example in terms of how they work, what they do, or how they're made, the outward shape or decorative appearance of many items can also be important.

Such external appearances can be protected, separately from any patent, by way of registered (and, in some countries unregistered) design rights.

Registered designs require certain formalities to be attended to at the relevant registry (the UKIPO, in the UK) and require the payment of official fees, in return for which a lengthy monopoly can be obtained. In the UK and European Union, this can be up to 25 years.

It is also possible to rely on unregistered design rights, which require no registration (and thus no fees) but which are far shorter in duration and which provide substantially weaker protection.

Copyright gives rights to the creators or authors of certain original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works, in addition to sound recordings, films, broadcasts, electronic media recordings and computer program listings.

In the UK, there is no registration system for copyright, as the right comes into operation automatically, as soon as the original work is created and reduced to some material form – i.e. recorded in some way. Whilst the period of protection is long – usually the life of the author plus 70 years – the scope of protection is relatively narrow and it is necessary both to prove copying and ownership of the original creation.

The attorneys at Potts Kerr have extensive experience of the filing and prosecution of registered design applications and are also able to advise fully on all aspects of industrial copyright and unregistered design right matters.