Unregistered design rights
Designs Law

Rights in designs allow businesses to prevent others from copying a design or drawings of the design and significant parts of the design.

Designs may be protected by registration in the UK and Europe, however lesser protection applies automatically on the creation of the design. Designs law primarily protects the aesthetics of a design – the way something looks. These automatic and unregistered rights also exist at European level.

Both registered and unregistered rights may exist concurrently. The advantages of registering a design as opposed to relying on an unregistered design are that protection is broader, not subject to as many qualifications and restrictions and creates a higher level of certainty of protection in a dispute.

What is an Unregistered Design?

Designs law protects shapes of articles and the way an article fits together (“shape“ and “configuration“ respectively). Features of shape and configuration may be the whole or part of an article (when the article is comprised of part that fit together to make a whole). The design feature may be internal or external to the article. The features of the design do not need to be invisible to the human eye, such as aspects of shape of a camera lens when the parts of the article are fitted together to make the whole. The design are the aspects of the article that gives the article its shape.

Automatic design rights exist in functional and aesthetic designs where the design is original and not commonplace.