In her annual Speech delivered at the State Opening of Parliament yesterday (May 8th) the Queen confirmed that stealing registered designs and selling counterfeit products for profit will become a criminal offence punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
The bill, which will be based on the recommendation of the Hargreaves report, commissioned by the Prime Minister and published in 2011 will protect the £35.5bn design industry by providing designers with the same level of protection afforded to the film and music industries and could bring in an extra £200m annually in revenue.
A report written by the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) said that the introduction of criminal sanctions for the counterfeiting and piracy of copyright-protected DVDs and films provides a precedent for this approach.
While a spokesperson for the IPO said that a criminal offence for registered design theft is intended to create a coherent approach to the protection of designs, trade marks and copyright in the UK, reduce the scale of registered design infringement by acting as a deterrent and better punish perpetrators of blatant design infringement.
The design industry has been lobbying for the introduction of criminal sanctions, as it sees no difference between a designer of clothing and a musician, as both are uniquely creative.
However, the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys warned that there could be a backlash in public opinion against design rights if copying was branded as criminal behavior. While others believe that the current system is robust enough to protect the intellectual property rights of design innovators.